Two Knight's Closing
by Sunbird Riding Shotgun
Summary: Sequel to Black Knight Castled Kind, end of the series. Those who forget the past will be doomed to repeat it.
1. Landing in London

**Notes: **This is the last story in my Black King White Knight series. It looks like it'll be nine full chapters and an epilouge (seven of which are already written) and will hopefully answer some questions and tie things up nicely.  
>Many thanks and much praise goes out to my Beta, LMX_v3point3, without whom I would be lost.<p>

Also, this story has a sound track. Sort of. For added enjoyment look up the songs each chapter is titled after. First one is Landing in London by 3 Doors Down.

**WARNINGS: Violence, violence towards minors, references to abuse, major characters having break downs and break throughs, references to sex, metaphor, trippy flashbacks, one instance of implied nuddity... you get the general idea. And yet strangely nothing bad enough to warrent a higher rating.**

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><p><strong>Two Knight's Closing: Chapter One<br>**_Landing in London_

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><p><em>Los Angeles<br>15 years ago_

They were ghosts, shadows, black smudges in the ugly yellow glow of an old light fixture just barely illuminating the back doorway to the run-down apartment building behind them.

But they were, for this moment at least, smudges together. Two ghosts in an island of light in a dark alley on a long January night, lingering for one last moment.

One last touch on the shoulder in place of the kiss and farewell they would have liked to give one another, if not for the ever watchful eyes and loose tongues. Rumors could have them dead by morning should anyone ever add any of those forbidden words to their names.

One last smirking joke and bark of laughter.

One last reminder of a birthday in just two days.

One last teasing comment about being old enough to drink at last.

One last look.

One last silent promise.

Then one turned, letting himself into the building and the other lingered a moment longer in that ugly yellow glow, waiting to see the light in the apartment above him come on, before he turned away and faded back into the shadows.

He still had work to do.

For the rest of his life he'd regret assuming the light had meant all was well.

_London, England  
>Present Day<em>

Eliot came awake with a jerk.

Or at least he was awakened by a jerk.

The plane beneath him bounced and jolted, the look of the weather outside the window next to him told him he should be glad he could see the flight quickly descending toward Heathrow Airport in London.

He took a moment to breathe, force himself to calmly check around himself to make sure the other passengers didn't look panicked and they weren't descending *too* quickly toward the runway below.

It was only after he'd ascertained that the flight was just rough and not looking to kill him and the other passengers of trans Atlantic flight 824 (and he really needed to stop committing that kind of information to his brain when he was taking what, for him, amounted to a vacation) he settled back into his seat and commenced berating himself just a little.

Yes, he was technically on vacation.

Mental health holiday? Medical leave of absence?

Whatever.

Yes, he wasn't technically on a job of any sort, and yes he should probably get as much sleep as he could now, considering in about two days he doubted he'd be able to get any sleep. Lord knows he was already having even more trouble than usual…

But that was no reason at all for him to get sloppy and sleep in a fucking public place.

Even if he knew he would have woken up if the stewardess so much as looked at him too long and if one of his enemies somehow managed to work through five levels of aliases, two separate hacks by Hardison and a last minute exchange of ticket to go to London instead of Madagascar then Eliot was probably screwed in the long run anyway.

Still. He was Eliot fucking Spencer.

He should know better.

The plane landed and Eliot let himself get lost in the motions of getting his shit together, getting his bag, getting off. All the lovely 'gettings' of travel. God knew he'd spent the whole week he took off last year traveling, just so he could get lost in those 'gettings' and not think about why he was taking the week off in the first place.

Why he always took the same week off, no matter what he was doing or where he was.

Of course, his getting was extended when he had to get himself some place to stay for at least this night. He didn't have reservations. He'd changed flights at the last possible moment, not even sure why he decided he really needed to come to London of all places.

He just really needed to be here.

He rented a car and eventually found a little bed and breakfast place in a quieter part of the city, family run and a little homey. He'd leave and find a roach motel, or London's equivalent, in a couple of days. He liked the old couple who ran this place but they seemed like they'd take concern to strange noises coming from his room and didn't want them caught in the middle of this week.

He booked the room for two days, paid in cash, and barely stashed his stuff away before leaving. He set out at a jog, figuring he'd run until his head cleared and then find a bar and a woman looking for no talk of tomorrow.

Yeah.

That had been the plan.

The plan hadn't involved it starting to rain hard, even if he ignored it.

The plan hadn't been finding himself in a place he was pretending he didn't recognize, outside a building of apartments and condos he knew from photographs, trying to catch his breath and sooth nerves that wouldn't let him stop twitching.

The plan hadn't involved two flashbacks while out on the run just from seeing a man out with his kid or from a whiff of a smell he could almost, but not quite, recognize.

The plan unfortunately didn't account for the fact it would be Valentine's day in less than a week and the UK was on the short list of places that celebrated the day he normally traveled to third world countries to avoid.

Still, he found himself walking the same crowded streets Nate had no more than a couple months ago, rain soaked hair clinging to his face and neck, the chill of the settling night seeping into his bones.

Eliot half- wondered if Hardison was tracking him on traffic cams like he had Nate. He really hoped not. He'd been jogging for what felt like (and might actually have been) hours. He normally wouldn't even be winded. He'd trained his body enough over the years that he could run at a light jog for… well not forever but a long, long time.

But he was out of breath. He was on edge. He was trying desperately to get a handle over himself.

He did not want them to witness him like this.

Hell. He didn't want anyone to witness him like this.

That plan was forever and completely destroyed when he heard a voice call out to him. "Eliot?"

He looked up in time to see Sophie emerge from the throng and come over to him. "What are you doing here?" she asked, concern on her voice.

He licked his lips and tried to form some kind of answer that didn't sound Parker crazy, or pathetic.

Or some variation on "I don't know."

He didn't have to say it. A hint of understanding crossed Sophie's face. "It's February eighth," she stated simply. She didn't understand. Not completely. She was a good grifter but Eliot knew there was no way she could know or guess anything past something bad was happening, or had happened. Maybe judging from his disappearance around this time last year she could guess it was some kind of anniversary. His attitude had to tell her it was a bad one.

But she couldn't know. She just couldn't.

"Come inside. Have some tea. You look half frozen," she insisted, accepting he was here like him jogging over to her place was normal. Like he hadn't just flown across an ocean for reasons he wasn't entirely sure about.

Her hand was warm when it settled briefly on his shoulder before she gently led him toward the door and up the stairs to her condo.

A half hour later he was sitting on her couch with a warm blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a mug of his favorite tea in his hands, shoulder to shoulder with Sophie watching a soccer game on her Tv, no questions asked.

He took a long drink, letting himself thaw out physically and maybe elsewise, and chanced a glance out the window.

The rain appeared to be letting up.

For the moment at least.

_Boston, MA_

There were some days when Nate wished he'd stayed sober, when he thought through the process of getting sober again and seriously almost considered it worth it.

And then there were days when he couldn't wait until he was alone enough to drink himself into oblivion.

Today was the later.

Right now, though, his plan to drink himself into oblivion was being somewhat hindered by the difficulty he was having getting Hardison and Parker out the door.

Okay, so he was actually delaying them a little himself. Eliot was taking two weeks off, Nate wasn't going to think about why, and Hardison had finally (_finally) _gotten his act together and had tried to persuade Parker to take advantage of this with him by going to Tokyo for a week.

Nate wondered if she really didn't realize it was a date or if she was just playing up to what they'd come to expect from Parker. Some days Nate really thought she understood a lot more than she let on.

Parker had eventually agreed to doing the tourist thing for five days in New York city, so long as they stole at least one thing worth at least five hundred dollars every day. She'd been wanting to practice her "Snatching" abilities (by which Nate thought she meant her ability to pull off a heist with no prep time, but he didn't want to know for certain).

Nate had ended up being pulled into the last minute preparations before the two set out for the air port. Hardison spent an entire hour giving him the run down of the latest updates to the "castle" (as Hardison was calling their building lately) security systems, how everyone's "Out of state" panic buttons worked, and a reminder of how to work Hardison's systems should Nate want to do research.

Then, of course, Parker had arrived and Nate ended up pulling her aside and giving her the list of pre-job reminders the team as a whole had been compiling over the past few years (ranging from how silverware is not weaponry, to the rule that pick pocketing cops is a bad idea no matter how fun it is).

Parker left to grab what she called "her other repelling gear". Nate had a feeling he really did not want to know what she meant by that and to distract himself Nate reminded Hardison that Eliot would break his legs and Nate would let him, should Hardison in any way hurt Parker.

While Hardison was having a minor freak out of denial Nate took the opportunity to slip a folded piece of paper into Hardison's bag.

Later Hardison would discover the list of those living in New York city who Nate knew to have had corrupt dealings at one point or another.

Just a little extra moral protection for when Parker got the itch.

Parker returned with, of all things, a purse and they grabbed their suitcases and finally, finally, got out the door.

Nate drifted through the apartment, straightening this and that left out of place by the flurry of activity that had set in. He considered spending the night here, hopefully warding off loneliness by avoiding the apartment he normally shared with Eliot. He was trying not to think of the younger man but it was hard, the more he realized how long it had been since they'd spent more than a day or two away from each other.

The week ahead kept getting longer and longer.

It was ironic, really, and somewhat pathetic that he kept thinking about how it would be Valentine's Day in a week and that this was the second time in a row he'd be spending it alone despite being in a steady relationship. Of course, considering…

It was likely he'd spend the rest of them alone.

He took a drink of the coffee sitting in the mug on the counter, nearly pulling a spit take over the ice cold coffee orange soda mix that Parker had started to drink recently.

He could almost hear Eliot saying "there's something wrong with her."

With a sigh Nate dumped the noxious concoction in the sink and went for more coffee, surprised to find the pot empty. He couldn't remember the last time that had happened.

He was going through the strangely unfamiliar motions of making coffee before he realized it had been months since he'd made himself coffee. The pot was always there, always enough for at least one last cup, freshly brewed at the usual times he went for coffee and he'd just never questioned it but…

He realized Eliot working in the kitchen was such a familiar sight that all the times he'd seen Eliot making coffee had never registered. It was Eliot being Eliot and the fact Eliot only drank tea had never quite processed all the way.

Nate stared at the package of filters in his hands like he didn't know what they were and tried not to process why that realization made him want to drink.

Eliot was a master of doing little things for people without being noticed.

When was the last time he'd done something little for Eliot?

He left the coffee half-made and turned for the first alcohol he could put his hands on.

He was about to open the beer when it registered it wasn't Eliot's favorite kind. While in their old place Eliot had kept a full stock of his favorite kinds of beer Eliot had never brought alcohol into Nate's apartment or the one they shared, even on the rare occasions he did the grocery shopping.

Even after Nate had started to drink again.

He had five days before any of the others showed up to knock on his door again.

He had this sudden, half impulsive urge to just not drink, go through the withdrawl, send Hardison and Parker home when they came by, and be sober when Eliot got home from wherever he was.

Maybe he'd be able to convince Sophie to come back if he was sober.

He'd opened the beer before he realized it, the dream died as he habitually took a sip.

Later he'd wish, in private, that it had been Eliot that had been the turning point, not his own need for control. Not the fact that things were getting so out of control already that even as he considered getting back on the wagon he all but couldn't help taking a long drink.

Thinking of Eliot coming home worn out, down, rubbed raw by the thing that had made him ask for time off, only to slowly realize there were no signs Nate had been drinking in the past two weeks, noticing the signs that Nate had gone through withdrawl, his face lighting up the way Nate wished it did more, when Eliot realized Nate was back on the wagon…

Instead of that, the drink burns down his throat and he sees himself sitting at the kitchen counter, watching the door, drinking until he's drunk, waiting for Eliot to get home. Eliot walking in the door, worn out, rubbed raw, confronted with Nate drunk and just turning around and leaving. Walking away like Sophie.

He sees the rest of them walking away.

He dumps the beer in the sink before he lets his body process what he's doing.

He busies his hands making something, making tea. He takes a small note of comfort from the fact he knows how to make Eliot's favorite tea off the top of his head, not letting himself think of anything else besides that.

When the tea is done he takes the mug and leaves the apartment, going up to Eliot's studio, sitting on the wide bench on the back wall under a window that had good, very good, memories of the times he'd watch Eliot's late night training and "help" him work on "endurance".

He sat and drank his tea and thought of Eliot.

He knew in the morning he'd probably give in to habit and have a drink or twelve.

But for the moment he'd drink Eliot's tea and tell himself he was going to take back control of one thing in his life.

_Los Angeles  
>19 years ago<em>

She had been watching them for a while now. It was hard to be sure and she had to be sure. One wrong move and Samuel was likely to go so far underground that all of her sisters together couldn't have sniffed him out.

So she watched them, like a ghost, like the ghosts they were.

She had tracked down most of the unit by now. They were street kids, the oldest she'd found didn't look like he could be older than twenty and god only knew life of the street made you age faster than you should. Maybe that was why she was still doing this instead of just doing what she did best and leaving.

Well that and the fact she had to be realistic. She doubted it would be the easiest job, to do what she'd originally come to do when she heard Samuel was in LA.

She wouldn't admit it out loud, but knowing who these kids were… From all reports she had found the project had been going on for at least two years. And from what she had heard there had been a lot more than the thirteen students now remaining, when the project had started.

It looked like they'd been having more success here than they'd ever had on the east coast. She needed someone on the inside, but after two years these kids were probably about as close to brainwashed as they could get.

Still these two, the oldest and another… there was something different about them. If she could just get them to open their eyes and fight back they would be able to get to the others and maybe this time they could take down Samuel for good.

If she was wrong though…

She just couldn't be wrong. Simple as that.

With long practiced ease she made her way down the fire escape to the alley below where the two boys lingered on the back stoop of an apartment building.

She gave a hand sign that told them that she knew much more about them then they'd probably ever thought a woman like her would know.

"Hello." They returned her greeting by standing, falling into complementary defensive stances. A part of her mind registered that they'd been trained to fight as a pair as well as by themselves. The closeness between them was more obvious in their stance than anything she'd seen yet. "I'm not here for a fight."

The older one narrowed his eyes, not even twitching when a sudden sharp breeze blew strands of his long hair into his face. "Then what are you here for?"

She met each sets of angry blue eyes steadily in turn as she spoke. "I need to talk to you boys about Samuel." Neither boy's face betrayed them, though there was just a hint of shock in the younger boy's eyes. "I want to help get you out."

_Present Day_

"This is him," Tara said, looking down at the body on a slab in a morgue in LA. His eyes were closed but she could almost imagine those same blue eyes she'd seen in that alley years ago standing so fierce and solid next to Echo. They'd kept in touch even after everything that had happened. Even after Echo disappeared and they all left LA. A friendship forged by hellfire and a mutual desire for revenge against a shared enemy. Neither of them had been saints, or become them. Though Charlie had made nine kinds of fun of her when he found out she what she was up to as a favor to Sophie. He still gave her no small amount of grief about how she didn't seem able to help herself when it came down to it.

Bleeding-heart Tara. Once, only two people on earth could get away with calling her that.

And now they were both dead, even if one was more official in that death than the other.

Some part of her still wondered if she'd one day be the one to identify Echo's body.

No. Not anymore. Echo was long dead. She doubted she would even have recognized him when she saw him if n-

"Full name?" the coroner asked.

"Charlie November India," she stated coldly.

The coroner stopped halfway through writing it and asked, "His parents military?"

"Something like that," Tara answered. She mentally apologized for not being able to give the coroner his real name, but that was Charlie's own fault for never telling her. "How did he die?" she asked, though the bullet hole in his forehead told her execution style it never hurt to ask.

Besides, this was Charlie. The only way you could shoot Charlie at point blank range was if you had him chained up to the point he couldn't even twitch.

Or if you were Samuel, a small almost scared part of her mind whispered.

"At first I thought it was the GSW to the head. Rather effective. But then upon the Bureau's instance I looked closer. Suicide by cyanide. He had a capsule hidden in a false back molar, very cold war era- esq. There was also some tissue damage to the gums that made me consider the possibility that someone forced the capsule to break but… no. Further examination revealed that it was highly unlikely. Obviously someone took the time to clean him up and make it look like a kill. Very odd."

She'd been afraid of that.

"Well thank you for calling this in when you found the contact number on his body. I'll remind you again this man was a sleeper agent and we're trusting you to keep this quiet in the interest of national security. You've been very helpful." God, she was starting to sound like Hardison. Maybe this break the team was on would be good for her. "If anything else comes up please contact me personally at this number."

"It was my pleasure Agent Sinclair." He took her card and turned to put it away. By the time he turned back she was long gone from the morgue.

An hour later she found herself on the rooftop she'd watched Charlie and Echo from, before she had even known their names. Where she'd watched over two boys and considered an action that would change the course of all three of their lives.

Charlie was dead.

She wouldn't cry for him. It wasn't her style even if he was one of those people to her.

It seemed almost unfair. They'd both cried when Echo disappeared, if only a handful of tears that didn't even beginning to wash away the blood they'd found, covering the warehouse floor after they'd heard the news. His body hadn't been among those found but… it was hard to tell themselves there was any chance he wasn't dead. They'd been younger then and the world had been colder and they'd been crying as much for themselves as the one they'd lost.

She wouldn't cry for Charlie and it was only fair.

After all when she died there would be no one left to cry for her.

But she would get him revenge, and finish what he'd started. What she'd started.

What the three of them had started.

Weeks ago he'd passed through Boston to see her, hell it was how she'd discovered he knew Eliot (And she'd have to figure out how to contact Eliot and tell him that Charlie was dead and she didn't want to think about that). He'd told her he'd heard disturbing rumors and thought that maybe Samuel had finally come out of hiding only he didn't like what he was hearing about the reasons why. He was afraid that maybe things were starting again.

She'd told him to be careful. To remember that Samuel would always have a huge advantage over him. That it was stupid and he should just fucking wait for her to finish paying Sophie back the favor and then they could check it out together. A few weeks or months wouldn't make that much of a difference.

But he'd gone ahead, alone, and had ended up dead.

Tara didn't know what he'd found, but there was only one reason Charlie would kill himself.

Samuel.

She had to move fast. She didn't know what Samuel knew or if this was going to send him underground again.

She needed help.

A thought came to mind and she winced.

So much for being even with Sophie after this stint with the Leverage crew.

But at least she'd be even with Charlie.

She pulled out her phone and dialed Sophie.

_London, England_

Sophie watched Eliot out of the corner of her eye as he got more and more involved with the game on TV. It had been mostly on accident, out of habit really, that she'd made sure to get a sports channel package, but now she was more than glad she had.

She didn't know what was going on with Eliot, though she had her theories, none of which she liked.

The Eliot and Nate thing had been a huge piece of why she left. But she had missed Eliot on more levels than she'd admit to. For reasons she couldn't quite let herself process, she felt safer when he was around. And warmer. Some days it felt like he was the team's sun warming and giving them nurturance so steadily you don't even notice he's there until he's not anymore.

She wondered if she could convince him to cook her dinner.

He probably didn't need convincing, just permission to use her kitchen.

She was starting to get into the game herself when her cell phone rang. Gesturing to Eliot to just keep watching and ignore her she took the phone into the kitchen.

She was surprised to find it was Tara on the line. "Tara?"

"Yeah," Tara confirmed. "Listen I know I said I'd keep an eye on things but something happened outside the team." A pause before Tara stated, her voice forcibly neutral, "Charlie's dead." Sophie felt her stomach drop a little. She didn't know Charlie personally but in the months she and Tara ran together when they first met she knew Tara had found a payphone at least once a week to call this mysterious Charlie and let him know she was still alive and tell him about her latest exploits. They were about as close as you could get to anyone in their line of work. "I don't know what happened but it doesn't look good."

Absently Sophie heard the game in the other room mute but she shook it off. "Take the time you need," Sophie told Tara. "The team's not going to be doing anything for another week at least. Though if it's not too personal maybe see if you can get Nate to help you. It never hurts to have IYS' best investigator on your side." She didn't verbally add that with Nate drinking again leaving him alone for a week was not the best idea.

"Help with what?" Eliot asked, he'd come to stand in the doorway.

"Is Eliot there?" Tara asked on the other end of the line, obviously confused.

Sophie mentally rolled her eyes. She hated having conversations in person and on the phone at the same time. It was times like this that she thought they should just all wear their comms all the time. She covered the phone's receiver and told Eliot, "A friend of Tara's died." Before putting the phone back to her ear. "Yes, he's here, he's passing through London and stopped in for a visit."

"Oh." Tara said sounding like she didn't know what to make of it. "Could you give him a message from me?"

"Of course. Though you could tell him yourself," Sophie supplied, mentally wondering when she became the team's messenger service and handed the phone over to Eliot.

"Tara?" he asked, confusion plainly on his face. Sophie couldn't hear what Tara said but she could see shock followed by disbelief cross Eliot's face. "Dead? Charlie? How... how did you know I kn… I'll be there soon as I can…" Anger, a familiar and oddly comforting emotion replaced the others. "Fuck no. I don't care. I ain't staying here while this shit goes down. I don't care, Tara. Tara?" More anger as he looked at the phone.

Sophie wasn't surprised that Tara had just hung up on him. It was Tara after all.

Eliot was already turning to go. He paused long enough to take a breath and thank her for the hospitality but he had to go.

She watched him, the tense lines and gritted teeth and all the signs of everything he'd been carrying when he turned up on her doorstep and everything pushing, bending, and threatening to break him all those times since the team first came together. The anger and pain blended into a white hot fire ready to burn down anything in his path.

Instinct told her to get out of the way, that this was Eliot in his determined mode and that she should just let him go like she always did. Like they always did. Just like in Kentucky and Nebraska and everything else.

In the end you just had to let him go.

But he had turned up this afternoon at her place soaking wet and chilled and looking lost. In Kentucky he'd come back alive when they let him go but hurting worse for the venture. In Nebraska, hell everywhere, in the end they let him go and get hurt and maybe they couldn't do anything but they never really seemed to try. Eliot was Eliot. He always came back, you just had to let her go off alone sometimes.

Him. You had to let him go off alone.

He was half the reason she had left.

But a part of the other half was to see if anyone would care enough to chase after her, to tell her they needed her to come back.

She was still waiting for that but…

She hurried after him, placing a hand on his shoulder to stop him before he walked out the door.


	2. Mr Seeker

**Notes: **Chapter Title comes from the Song Mr. Seeker by Creed.

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><p><strong><em>Chapter Two<br>_**_Mr. Seeker_

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><p><em>Flintwood Youth Center L.A.<br>18 years ago_

He was waiting.

For what? He wasn't entirely certain. A sign maybe. Something to force his hand.

He should just leave. He could just leave.

But that didn't really matter, did it?

"Are you ready?"

Eliot looked up, surprised by the voice. The boy, man now really, approaching him seemed like a stranger.

A part of him learned long ago to fear strangers, even if he knew this man wasn't really a stranger.

They were at the doors of the youth center, his home for a few short but eternally long years after he met Samuel and his life was forever changed. The place both he and this stranger called home.

"Charlie?" He asked, uncertain.

"Are you ready?" Charlie asked again, that smile everyone around here recognized gracing his lips.

Eliot had to look away, almost afraid that what was whipping through his mind would show in his face.

"Yes," Eliot told him.

A hand took his own, shockingly gentle and surprisingly warm despite the chill in the air. "Lets go in then. They're waiting for you, aren't they sensei?" The man mocked gently. The thought of the students brought a small smile to Eliot's lips to match and making those last few steps easier.

Yes, they were waiting for him.

In the darkness a light appeared between him and Charlie, bright fire, the sign he'd been looking for.

The fingers intertwined with his own promised a new path to take, of burning down old worlds and raising new hell, of wind and fire.

Of fate.

The fire burned brighter against the night and they walked into the waiting darkness of the building.

_London, Present Day_

His mind was spinning. Charlie? Dead? Suicide?

He blinked against the afterimage of the nineteen year old boy racing next to him into the youth center. Of long days spent on the streets learning to survive and short but wild nights learning to live.

He reached for the door, ready to leave, get the fuck to LA and find out what the hell had happened.

He could still feel the weight of Charlie's hand on his shoulder from barely a few weeks ago. Charlie had surprised him by visiting Boston and the two had spent a night just walking through the city, catching up.

They were always catching up it seemed. Ever since they'd lost contact after Eliot left LA for the first time, they'd never had enough time together to do anything but play catch up. It had taken them eight years to find each other again and in the years between then and now Eliot could count on one hand the number of times they'd been together for longer than twenty-four hours.

He'd never even gotten around to thanking Charlie for N-

The sensation of a hand on his shoulder became very real.

Eliot turned sharply, half surprised to find it was Sophie, though he wasn't sure why he'd thought she would just let him walk out like this. "I have ta go," he said again. "An' old friend of mine died. I need to find out why."

Sophie's face was unreadable as she answered. "Tara's already looking into it. I'm sure she'll call as soon as she knows something."

Eliot couldn't even begin to construct a polite response to that statement. They both knew it wasn't true.

"'m going Sophie." He said, turning away again. He needed to get out and get some air and figure out what the hell had gone wrong. Charlie was a specialist, same as Eliot, and he'd been fine when they'd last seen each other. A little worried. A little paranoid. But that was normal for both of them.

"Then wait ten minutes and let me grab my bag, because I'm coming with you."

That took him off guard enough that it took him a half second to respond. "No Sophie. You're stayin' here or 'least stayin' away. There's stuff goin' down and I don't want you around if things turn out badly."

"I wasn't asking." Sophie shot back, her voice clipped. "This obviously has you off balance and from what I saw earlier your head wasn't anywhere near clear to begin with. You need to stop running off by yourself and let us help you for once."

"I need to stop running?" he asked, his voice perfectly, icily, calm. "Look where we are! You ran off to London and left us ta try to pick up the pieces. Hardison's been freaked, he almost got killed, Parker's been fuckin' scared. I was the one who had to pick up the pieces you left us in and try to pretend I wasn't worryin' about you because if either of them thought I was just a little worried they'd freak out even more. And don't even get me started on Nate. You don't get ta talk about runnin' off to me."

Her expression, almost startled at first turned snide. "Don't get you started on Nate?" The snarky tone and perfectly posed expression would have hidden the hurt from anyone who didn't know her as well as the team. "Finally figured out what he had now has he?"

The forced control of his voice almost broke at that. "Tell me this isn't about Nate. That you didn't fucking leave us because I stole your boy toy and you wanted to teach him a lesson."

Something in her eyes changed, the tone of her voice shifting from icy to almost brittle. "It's not," she almost whispered, eyes fleeting away from him. "…not completely and… not like that. Eliot, you know I wouldn't leave you all just because of that."

The emotion, he wasn't even sure what it was, seemed genuine in a way he wasn't used to seeing from her. She actually seemed… vulnerable… and he found himself softening his tone to match. "But it is part of it."

She folded her arms around herself, making her look surprisingly, frighteningly small. "I told him I left to find myself, learn who I was, and when I came back I'd tell him my real name. Truth is I don't have one. My mother was a grifter… she never gave me one. I… Sophie's the closest I've ever come to having an identity. This team… this family… it grounded her. Gave me a reason to keep her… but she was created as someone for Nathan Ford to chase and somewhere along the line she became someone meant for him to love and maybe in another story he would have. But now… she's a dead end Eliot. She's been changing and growing and… she's not Sophie anymore. I'm not Sophie anymore."

Silence. He didn't know what to say.

He didn't think she'd ever been this honest with him.

Then she seemed to snap out of wherever her mind had gone and she covered again but there was an expression that made him think that maybe she'd never been that honest before with anyone.

Maybe not even herself.

"I'm sure he hardly notices I'm gone in any case," she said, recovering a bit of her normal voice.

"He knows you're gone," Eliot told her, repaying honesty with honesty and maybe just… so much that had been up in the air was coming out. Feelings and thoughts pressed back and denied for so long being spoken almost as they finally allowed to exist. "Trust me. He knows."

She looked up at him, something in her expression making him the one to look away this time.

"I might have been the one he got but you're the one he's always wanted." The words burned as they came out. "I just… I put out first." He gave a cold bitter laugh. "Put myself in his way. Took care of him. Didn't leave when I damn well should have. You played hard to get, nah, you showed dignity, standards. I just threw myself at him, knowing even as broken as he was, even if he never got better, it was more than I deserved." He shook his head. "Even now there are some days I think if you came back for him he'd choose you."

A shrug, forced disinterest, mentally shoving away the feelings trying to smother him from the inside. He'd spent the entire relationship knowing that it was probably wasn't going to last. That this was one of those good things in his life that he should enjoy while he could but expect it to end so he'd be ready to move on. Like the team. He wasn't sure when along the line it had gotten out of hand, that thinking that 'this will end someday, probably soon' had become painful.

But he wasn't going to start lying to himself now. He'd just ignore the pain and enjoy it while it lasted.

"He'd be safer with you," he finally added. "Hell, once you figure out who you are maybe you'd be able to fix the problem 'stead of him trying to fix you."

He knew she was moving closer but still flinched unconsciously when she spoke.

"Eliot," she said. He hadn't expected sadness in her voice. He looked up, surprised. "You don't really believe that do you?"

Empathy on her face. Pity.

He pulled away, turning his back, pushing up his walls.

He didn't want her pity. Didn't need her pity.

There was no reason to pity him. He lived in reality. He'd enjoy this ride while it lasted but it wasn't like it was going to break him when it ended.

He'd let that happen once. He knew better now.

And he couldn't exactly expect to meet another Nathan Ford to put him back together if he broke again.

"Go," he said to the door and Sophie. "Get your bag. I'm leaving for the airport as soon as I can get a hold of Hardison." A beat and he heard himself add. "If you're ready to go in time, you can come with me."

She hesitated a moment, the silence and the things said and unsaid hanging heavily in the air before she turned, slipping into her bedroom and leaving him to study the grain of the wood of her door and the afterimage of a blue eye'd boy still swimming through his head.

_Los Angeles, CA  
>18 Years Ago<em>

Blue eyes watching him, always watching, but safe watching, protective watching.

Like his eyes watching Joey.

But he'd never watch Joey exactly like those eyes watched him.

Charlie ran a hand through his hair, gentle, always gentle with him. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked Eliot, hesitating another moment. "I… I don't want to hurt you more."

"You won't," Eliot told him, willing his body to relax. It would make this easier if he was relaxed. "I'd rather it be you than anyone else." He hesitated just half a second before saying the words he used to think he'd never say to anyone again. "I trust you. You'll keep me safe."

Charlie wrapped strong arms around him, pulling him closer before letting go. "Are you ready?'

Eliot took a step back, meeting Charlie's eyes and nodding. "Say the words."

_Boston, MA  
>Present Day<em>

Five hours sober, if that even counted as being sober, and the coffee in his hands seemed to taste wrong without the splash of something extra.

Or maybe it was that he didn't seem to be able to make coffee with the same kick Eliot did.

He'd tell himself it was the later.

The newspaper sat on the counter in front of him, the crossword puzzle mostly done but quickly losing the ability to hold his interest.

It was going to be a long two weeks.

"Nate?"

Tara's disembodied voice rang through the apartment and Nate could have sworn five hours was not nearly time enough for the hallucinations to start.

"Nate?" The screens for the briefings blinked into life, the far left showing Tara standing on what looked like the roof of a building, adjusting the laptop and webcam she was using. "Anyone there?"

Leaving the crosswords for the far more interesting mystery of why Tara was contacting him, he crossed over to the briefing area. "I'm here. What's happening?"

"I found us a job." Tara started. "Well… I found a job. I know the teams taking time off but I need to move." She paused, took a breath. "I'll run it solo myself if I have to but I could use any help I could get. Even just having a partner…"

…Interesting… He took a sip of the coffee, not noticing the difference for the first time.

It had been a long time since he'd run a job without the entire team at his back.

"What's the job?"

She typed something on the keyboard and brought up a picture of a tall and wiry man in his middle ages. Nate could almost hear Eliot in the back of his head saying this guy was military, it was a very distinctive stance. "Samuel Kent, career military researcher. Spent most of his younger years climbing the ranks as fast as he could until he got to a point he could run projects of his own. Started studying behavioral conditioning and modification and applying it to condition and train super-soldiers. He had a few breakthroughs and during a study conducted in the eighties actually managed something of a success. Unfortunately a few of the other subjects had psychotic breaks due to the increasingly inhumane experiment and they attacked and killed the success."

Nate nodded, withholding comment.

"He'd been on his way out for awhile, too much money and nothing to show for it but that got enough attention that Samuel was quickly shown the door. Not long later he reappeared on the streets of L.A., he was making another attempt on his own, using boys taken off the streets as the subjects. They were younger, already more susceptible because of that, and he chose the ones on the run from the worst homes, hoping to get the ones who were already broken and unstable. He'd show them just enough kindness, just enough attention and affection, to keep them doing what he asked until he pulled them in too far for them to get away. Mix that with the fact he didn't have an oversight committee to keep his methods sane and safe… he killed a lot of boys. But he also managed to create thirteen "students" embedded with varying degrees of behavioral conditioning who were practically brainwashed."

This was starting to sound like one of the conspiracy theories Eliot and Hardison tormented Parker with, except it was all… just a little this side of believable. He knew with the right tactics and a bunch of broken run aways no one cared about or would come looking for… "What happened? You said this was twenty years ago. Aren't we a little late?"

Tara shook her head. "During the third year of the program one of the survivors of Samuel's last official experiment heard he was in L.A. and went there to put him down. They found out what was going on and approached two of Samuel's students. Echo and Charlie.

"Charlie was the oldest in the group and was fighting the conditioning. Normally Samuel would have killed him but Charlie and Echo were a sort of sub experiment Samuel was conducting. One of the problems of the conditioning was that first getting a student to take it relied heavily on their survival instincts and the boys who he took in often were past the point of caring. This was the case with Charlie and Echo, but they cared about each other, even if they were nearly suicidal on their own. He could use their need to keep the other alive to force them to take the conditioning, but it meant he couldn't kill Charlie when he was starting to reject it and their focus was on each other rather than him."

Nate nodded, catching onto the importance. "Echo and Charlie were 'vulnerable' then. If the one trying to take out Samuel offered them a way out they might do it to protect the other."

"Exactly. The three of them devised a plan together. The students had been taught to only trust Samuel and fellow students. A good way of keeping out outsiders but once Echo and Charlie turned they eventually managed to turn all the students. They used the tactical skills Samuel had been teaching them to take down the project and destroy the headquarters… but Samuel escaped.

"They scattered afterwards, throughout LA, some young enough went into the foster system, most went underground into the crime world somehow. The three who started everything stayed close, keeping track of everything and an eye out for Samuel until one day Echo just disappeared. The other two found blood at his apartment, eventually tracked him through police reports to find out he'd been taken to a warehouse and tortured. By the time they got to the scene the police had taken away the body but the blood at the scene was enough to tell them someone twice Echo's size couldn't have possibly survived. They split up but kept in touch."

Nate watched Tara on the screen, her face had never once betrayed anything but… "So… you're our client?" A hint of surprise flashed across Tara's face before a look that plainly said 'of course, why did I even bother?' "You're the one who found them. Makes sense. What's going on now?"

She took a breath, just a hint of emotion showing now that she wasn't trying as hard. "Charlie's dead. A little under a month ago he came through Boston, telling me he'd heard rumors that sounded disturbingly like Samuel was back in action in L.A.. He went to look into it and next thing I know he's dead. I want to look into this Nate, but Samuel knows me and he knows what I look like. I'll need a partner if I even want to get close."

He considered it a moment before responding. "I'll help you do recon. Depending on what we find we'll make our next move. If we need help we can call in Parker and Hardison." He glanced toward the clock, it was already late and there was no way he'd be on a flight before nine o'clock, if any even left Boston for L.A. at that hour. "I'll be on the first flight out in the morning."

Tara nodded stiffly. "Contact me when you get your flight time. I'll pick you up at the airport. Hopefully I'll have more information by then."

The screen went blank and Nate reached for his cell phone to call Hardison.

_Los Angeles, CA  
>18 years ago<em>

Charlie locked eyes with him, moving closer, hand resting on his shoulder, saying words whose meanings logged into his mind, into his heart, without really even registering in his conscious.

Eliot knew the steps to this dance. He'd been dragged unwillingly through it over and over again.

But this wasn't that.

This was Charlie. Strong but gentle Charlie. Charlie who protected him.

Charlie who loved him.

This was his choice.

Charlie leaned in, pressing a kiss to his lips and Eliot forced himself to relax, forced his mind to clear, and waited for the next step.

"Are you ready?" Charlie asked again.

Eliot nodded and closed his eyes.

"No. Watch me." Charlie told him. "I want you to remember it's not him."

He opened his eyes, seeing blue eyes lock back with his.

Then the world went away.

_Los Angeles, CA  
>Present day<em>

"Where are we?" Sophie asked, breaking the strange silence that had been between them since they left London yesterday. In the hustle of trying to get here, running on mostly adrenalin and what sleep they could catch on the flight, they hadn't really spoken more than necessary. Everything they'd said and hadn't said keeping the silence too thick to break.

But here they were standing in a one room apartment in a decaying and abandoned apartment building at some ungodly pre-dawn hour of the morning and Eliot was walking around, hand never quite touching things. The expression on his face was focused, like he was trying to remember something just out of reach.

"My old apartment," he said simply.

"How old?" Sophie asked, turning sharply when she heard something that sounded distressingly like rats. Or roaches. In a place like this it may have very well been either.

"From the first time I lived in L.A." Eliot supplied. "Fifteen years ago. The building was half empty then. I guess after what happened the rest of the tenants cleared out."

"What happened?" Sophie asked, unconsciously moving closer to Eliot really really wanting to get out of here and away from whatever was making that noise.

"The reason why I don't drink." That caught Sophie's attention. She turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. "At least not enough to get drunk. I was working as a thug for a local drug boss, just starting out. The boss thought I was gettin' too good and told the rest of the guys I worked with to take me out. On my twenty-first birthday they took me out drinking, got me too drunk to fight back. I woke up tied to a chair here. They spent the next three days trying to get me to tell them where I'd stashed my money." He must have seen her confused expression because he explained. "I spent only as much as I needed to survive and sent the rest of my pay to my sister. She got into college and I was doing what I could to pay for it." A half bitter smile. "At least until she found out how I was paying for it."

A memory from when she first heard about Joey floated up in the back of her mind. Hardison's voice stating Josephine had attended Kentucky university for two years but never graduated.

"Of course I'd never told them about Joey," Eliot said. "They thought I had it stashed away somewhere." He shook his head. "Sometime in day three I managed to get loose… or the black knight did. First time he got out."

Oh dear.

"I left L.A. after that. Didn't come back until we all got together."

"So why did we come here?" Sophie asked, nearly jumping at the sound on the floor above. She knew that had to be a rat.

"Because something ain't right," Eliot muttered, almost to himself. "I remember them holding me here but… that doesn't make sense."

"Why not?" Sophie asked trying to focus on the subject at hand, looking around and trying to see the apartment as it had been fifteen years ago. It was cramped and small, long since stripped of anything of value or use but…

"I had neighbors, Sophie, and the walls are thin. I was screamin' in pain on an' off for three days an' no one called the cops."

She swallowed hard, trying to force back the mental image of a twenty one year old Eliot tied to a chair, bloody, and crying out in pain.

"There's a warehouse not a block from here," Eliot continued,"It would have been easier to just take me there." Suddenly he seemed to focus on something and moved, bending down in front of the tiny ventilation shaft near the floor by the mattress-less and rotting cot.

With practiced moves he loosened the grate and pulled it off, reaching inside and pulling out a bundle wrapped in plastic and apparently duct taped to the inside of the vent.

After clearing a section of floor with his foot Eliot opened the package and dumped it onto the floor.

Pictures fell out.

Head shots of a bunch of boys Sophie guessed to be between the ages of sixteen and nineteen, photos of groups of them, and nearly a dozen photos of a single blonde haired blue eyed boy over the course of several years, probably his late teens to early twenties.

Eliot picked up a photo of the boy and what Sophie guessed was his seventeen year old self standing next to the sign for the New Sparks Youth Center. "This isn't right."

"What's not right?" Sophie asked.

"I met Charlie when I was eighteen," Eliot said. "And the youth center was called Flintwood, not New Sparks."

He seemed strangely disturbed for someone who had just misremembered a name. "It's been eighteen years Eliot. You might have misremembered."

Eliot shook his head. "Ever wondered how I know, how I remember, everything I do?"

Actually yes, though she'd gotten used to it a long time ago and stopped noticing as often. "I used to."

"I have Hyperthymisia." Eliot stated, not taking his eyes off the picture. "Perfect autobiographical recall. If it happened to me or if I witnessed it I can remember it in exact detail." He looked toward her with an almost grim expression. "If I wanted to I could give you a detailed day by day account of my life since I was a seven. Every person I met, every place I went, every fight I was ever in, even any fucking meal I ate. I could repeat back to you ever sentence of technobable I've ever heard Hardison say, still wouldn't understand half of it, but I remember it."

Nothing in his face even hinted he was exaggerating.

"I lived at the youth center for two years. I met Charlie there. Samuel taught me how to fight while I was there. I left that building and entered the criminal underworld. I would not just misremember the name of it."

He gathered the pictures and headed for the door without explanation and Sophie hurried to follow, suddenly not nearly as glad as she should have been to leave this place.

_Los Angeles, CA  
>18 Years ago<em>

The world still felt far away as he found himself watching the slowing rise and fall of the body in front of him slipping into unconsciousness, if he wasn't already.

The world was quiet, sounds seemed distant.

He'd done it. It had felt good. It had felt right.

Now he felt sick.

He turned away, not able to look. He knew he'd feel better once his head slowed back down to a speed that could process this all.

He wouldn't regret this. Hell, maybe he'd do it again.

Panic shot through him at that thought and he looked up, breathing hard.

He was waiting.

For what? He wasn't entirely certain. A sign maybe. Something to force his hand.

He should just leave. He could just leave.

But that didn't really matter did it?

"Are you ready?"

_Los Angeles, CA  
>Present Day<em>

This wasn't right.

He was staring at the burned out ruins of the youth center and he knew something wasn't right.

Everything he remembered, everything… it just…

Wasn't quite right.

Sophie was quiet behind him but watching him with worried eyes.

He walked up to the burned stump of the sign he and Charlie had been leaning against in the picture, mentally reconstructing it.

The letters _Flintwood_ seemed to glow in his mental image and he forced the image to change, to say _New Sparks _like in the photo.

A flash of pain at his temple like a warning but the image locked in place.

He looked back to the steps where he remembered standing, hesitating. Samuel was going to pay him a little money to teach martial arts to the younger kids and he'd been standing here freaking out when Charlie came by. Charlie had been another 'teacher' who he'd seen but not known well before then. Charlie had pulled him inside and they'd become close quickly in the month that followed, before the Youth Center burned down and Samuel had hired them out with the rest of his best students to local crime bosses as well trained thugs. Samuel had used a special mix of highly addictive drugs to make sure they all did as he said until he and Charlie had led the others to fight back.

Eliot could remember going through the withdrawl.

You didn't make up a memory like that out of thin air.

Eliot had looked to Samuel like a father and Samuel had stuck a needle in his arm and all but pimped him out as a fighter.

He could remember the feeling of betrayal.

You didn't just wake up one morning remembering that for no good reason.

He'd always told himself the drugs were why those few years of his life were so fuzzy. When you're spending all you're time half strung out or in the first stages of withdrawl it doesn't do your memory any favors and he can still remember more of it than most people would.

He walked away from the sign, up to the step he'd been standing on when Charlie first called out to him.

"_Are you ready?"_

He closed his eyes, forcing his mind to go back years, building the world up around him. The steps of the youth center, the building, the basketball court to his left and open blacktop to his right, the low wall around it, the silence, the darkness.

It had been night.

He remembered meeting Charlie during the day.

He put his hand on the step's railing and only then did he notice the red stain on his hand.

On his shirt.

On the steps.

His eyes shot open and he looked up, hearing steps entering through the front gate of the center.

He met Samuel's eyes across the yard, Sophie's words echoing in his mind but not registering.

The memory snapped back into focus.

Bodies littered around the court, Charlie with the empty containers from the gasoline he'd finished pouring at strategic locations, and an unlit Molotov cocktail in his hand.

"Echo. Check in." The memory disappeared and the breath left his lungs and his eyes reconnected with Samuel's. "Somno, at ease student."

His legs folded underneath him, tension fleeing his body. He barely felt his knees hit pavement before the world went black and he dropped into a waiting oblivion.


	3. Devil in the Wishing Well

**_Two Knight's Closing  
><em>**_Devil in the Wishing Well_

* * *

><p><em>A familiar smell. He couldn't open his eyes, he wouldn't. He knew where he was but didn't at the same time but he knew not to open his eyes.<em>

_His knees hurt. His face hurt. Rough material around his wrists itched but told him he was being held. He didn't remember. He didn't remember._

_His head was foggy, full of sensations he was only half conscious of. Stimuli designed to not even register._

_He knew who had him._

_Was Charlie here? Tara?_

_Did they get Sophie?_

_The smell of cheap beer and sweat hit him, faint like a memory but strong as a punch to the stomach._

_He opened his eyes without opening his eyes. Dark figures moved around him. A voice asked a question and his mouth moved to answer._

_Slippery. His mind was slippery. Out of control. Like him._

_He couldn't control it. They could._

_Fear penetrated the fog. Not for himself. Never for himself. He'd left that kind of fear behind a long time ago. But he felt answers at the edge of his mind. Answers that he couldn't let them have._

_Answers they could get so easily._

_Pain, white hot, filled his body but cleared his mind. Pain was familiar._

_Pain made you pay attention._

_He knew how to do this. He'd known this could happen. Memories safely buried for twenty years, half recalled lessons on how to hide them again flashed across his mind._

"What happens if you're questioned by the enemy?" Samuel asked, using a handful of his hair to pull his head back. The very distinctive click of a lighter warned him before the heat came painfully close to his skin.

"A Liar's House" He answered, taking a breath to make sure his words didn't slur. He could feel the fog of drugs pressing down on him but Samuel wouldn't be satisfied if he let it show. "A trick of the mind where you build the memories and identity of an alias within yourself. A place where you can go when questioned where your alias is the t-t-truth..." The flame came closer to skin as he stuttered, he bit down on the shout of pain, finishing the response. "and you don't even know the secrets you're trying to protect."

_He knew what to do._

_He closed his eyes and closed them again. He could see the hallway, the Liar's House he'd constructed, using what Samuel himself had taught them._

_He reached the first door and stood in it, looking out at a seven eleven parking lot, at a scared fifteen year old and the start, when fate changed course and now he had to change history._

His knees hurt.

Funny, he had a frickin' hole in his side ( he hated guns now, you couldn't really hate them properly until after you'd been shot) and his mind was stuck on how his knees and face hurt.

Okay, so the bullet was gone and the hole had been sewn up. He'd even snatched some of the real nifty pain killers they'd had him on before he left the group home three days ago and was taking half doses at the appointed hour. It wasn't enough to make his head go fuzzy, as nice as that was, but it was enough to deaden the pain in his side.

And wasn't he getting wimpy? Eight months without a thorough beating from That Man and he was taking pain meds and focusing on the fact his face and knees hurt.

Shouldn't the pain meds take care of that?

No. He was probably focusing on his knees and face to ignore his stomach.

He hadn't had much of anything to eat since the night before he slipped out of the group home with nothing but his new (well, newly in his possession at least) shoes, jacket, and the clothes on his back. He had nothing else worth taking. His one picture of Joey had been in his old jacket's pocket and his jacket was now… well he didn't know where.

No money, no possessions… nothing but the name Eliot Spencer and a bullet hole in his side that testified he'd almost reached his sixteenth year no easier than any of the years before.

Well nothing but that and a desperate need to eat.

He sat on the curb of a Seven-Eleven's parking lot, hidden from the bright (dangerous) light streaming through the store's windows and the ever watching (more dangerous) eyes of the store clerk (and everyone else), by the two dumpsters he sat between.

He didn't even notice the smell anymore.

In a half hour the clerks would throw away the leftover doughnuts and sandwiches and as soon as they were back inside and switching off the lights he'd climb into the dumpster and finally get something to eat.

But only if they didn't see him. If they saw kids like him waiting out here they'd put rat poison in the food.

To discourage the rats.

A shadow crossed between him and the lit parking lot, a figure coming to stand in the space between the dumpsters. "Hey there, kid."

The voice was gentle, cautious, but Eliot scrambled to get to his feet anyway. The figure was bigger than him and he'd already learned that dark figures carried guns and knives, and mercy had never been a word in his world.

"Hey, don't run. I'm not here to hurt you, kid. Just checking by to see if anyone was waiting here tonight. They've been spiking the food every night for the past two weeks."

He cursed, mentally scrambling for the next best place to catch a quick meal, or any meal.

"Hey kid, how old are you?" the voice asked, softening his words a little more.

Eliot stood up, standing at his full height, even though he knew it wouldn't do much to help dispel the "kid" in the dark he was small enough to pass as twelve better than just weeks short of sixteen. "Eighteen," he lied.

"Right," the voice said dryly. "You're a year older than me. I believe you completely."

Wait… What?

"Come out of there," he insisted. "Let me buy you something to eat before this place closes."

His stomach betrayed his better instincts. He took a step or two closer. "Why?" Eliot demanded. "What's in it for you?"

"While you stand there safely in that brightly lit area underneath those surveillance cameras eating the food I bought you, you're gonna listen to me tell you about a safe place nearby. After that you can leave. No strings attached." The boy took several steps back away from the entrance to Eliot's hide out, giving him room to get out while still giving the boy a wide berth.

"Alright," Eliot answered. "But I ain't gonna listen if you start talkin' 'bout god's mercy. He don't know what the word means."

Eliot went to stand in the "safe" (not safe, in bright light, never safe) spot pointed out by the boy and the boy headed for the door of the shop, looking like he was going to make good on his promise.

Before he opened the door though, he stopped. "Hey, kid, what's your name?"

"Eliot. Yours?"

The boy grinned. In the harsh light Eliot could now clearly see well worn clothes layered for protection as much as warmth, bright blue eyes, dirty and overgrown blonde hair, and a smile that had him unconsciously returning it when the boy responded, "They call me Charlie."

"They?" Eliot called back.

"They," was the smirking non-reply before the boy disappeared into the store.

That night Eliot first heard about New Sparks Youth Center, first heard the name Samuel.

But his mind was caught on Charlie, on blue eyes, kind voice.

_Safeherehome_

The first bite of food, Charlie calling him by name (and no one called him by name. He was an it, a thing, a rat. But Charlie used his name), the hand on his shoulder, the way the boy's eyes kept scanning the darkness around them.

It felt dark (safe).

Everything in Eliot's head told him not to trust. That Charlie might have knives and guns and worse things. That no one was safe. That Eliot was an it and Charlie had money and that made him not an it and its are supposed to be afraid of not its cause not its always wanted something and always hurt.

But when Charlie put a hand on his shoulder he didn't flinch.

He couldn't remember the last time someone tried to touch him and he didn't flinch.

His head was afraid, jumbled up thoughts of danger and pain and the terror that had overtaken every part of his life and kept him running scared constantly.

But the instincts that that fear drove, the ones that kept him alive because he trusted his instincts and ran the moment they told him to...

Those instincts didn't think of Charlie as a threat.

They said he was safe and Eliot followed his instincts when they said to run.

Only this time he was running toward what might be safety.

When Charlie told him about the Youth Center, offered to show him where it was, introduce him to the man who ran it Eliot nodded and followed Charlie as he led them away into the safety of the shadows.

_He closed the door and turned, opening the opposite one. He looked in just long enough to see a fifteen year old leave a group home, the pamphlet for Flintwood Youth Center's martial arts program stuffed in his pocket._

_He went to the next door._

Samuel watched them from the shadows of the doorway. Eliot could feel those eyes on him and he pushed himself harder.

With two months under his belt he wasn't the newbie anymore. He knew the routines. Knew that any time day or night he could come to the youth center and train. Go through the workouts Samuel helped each newcomer establish to build strength and endurance and go through the basic hand to hand combat routines Samuel taught them to practice between the self defense classes he taught.

It was exhausting and more time at the youth center meant less time scraping together food and finding a semi safe place to sleep.

But pushing himself hard and improving quickly might catch Samuel's eye. Samuel gave praise to anyone deserving but if you caught his eye, if you stood out and showed promise he might invite you to join his advanced class.

The advanced class was made up of the most promising of the boys at the youth center. He taught them actual martial arts, paid them a few dollars a day so they could stay at the youth center to train or help with the other students without going hungry, and even let them sleep and store their stuff in one of the back rooms.

And Charlie was in the advanced class.

He'd been disappointed to learn that Samuel gave Charlie extra funding to go out and bring kids into the center. At least until Charlie offered to buy him lunch five days after bringing Eliot to the center, his one condition being that Eliot train with him for a few hours in return.

Later he'd learn that each student in the advance class got a serious bonus from Samuel if one of the kids they brought in joined the advanced class and he gave out small allowances for trying to guide a kid in that direction.

But by then Charlie had stopped exchanging rushed meals for extended and intensive practices. By then he and Charlie would be spending most (all) of their free time together. Training together as often as possible during the day and lingering together until Charlie had to bed down for the night or be locked out.

Samuel took a step out of the doorway and Eliot turned, letting Samuel know he knew Samuel was there.

That got him an approving smile and Eliot grinned in return. When Samuel smiled at him like that he didn't feel like an it.

He felt like a good son.

"I have to say Charlie's faith in you was well founded," Samuel said. "I'd like you to join my advanced class. I think you can have a place here." Eliot held his breath, waiting to hear the name that would confirm it. Every member of Samuel's advanced class was known by the name he gave them when he took them under his wing, naming them as his own. "Echo."

_He looked in, bitter taste at that. Pain. Though it might have been physical. He didn't know. His body didn't matter now. He shut the door.  
>What was this feeling of bile about?<em>

_He opened the next door._

Charlie held him.

The Roost, as the advanced class called the back room where they slept, was crowded. There were no beds, the room was hardly bigger than a walk in closet after all, but the shelves that lined either side of the long and narrow room were decent make shift five leveled bunk beds wide enough to squeeze in two street thin teenagers.

It was cramped and Eliot was so very glad he'd gotten over his claustrophobia years ago because the shelves weren't even tall enough for Charlie to roll over in.

But it was safe.

You could sleep a whole night and for once not worry about living to wake up the next morning. The heavy wood and iron lockable door ensured that. With the locking mechanism on the inside and Samuel the only one with a key to the outside they could sleep knowing not even late night visiting students could get into their private haven.

But the thing that made Eliot, no, that made Echo feel safest was that Charlie had invited him to share his bunk.

Pressed between Charlie and the wall in a dark (safe) room with the sounds of nineteen other boys breathing the only thing breaking the silence, the smell of wood and Charlie's leather jacket pillowed under their heads…

That was the safest he ever remembered feeling.

He closed his eyes. Breathing in the night. Breathing in the smell of leather and the faint scent of perfume that smelled like dark hair and tea and fashionable silk.

An arm tightened around his shoulders and Charlie told him to not to wake up.

Or was it to wake up?

He felt a bug bite the inside of his arm and he cursed. He hated spiders.

_He stepped back, watching huge spiders try to chase him out of the room and down the hallway, needles replacing their fangs. He could still hear a voice telling him to wake up._

_Were they drugging him? Were they trying to bring him back to reality?_

_He fought his own fear of needles and hatred of spiders, punching and kicking them out of the way as he struggled forward, finally reaching the door again._

_He closed the door, finding himself in an empty hallway, wondering why his insides felt hollowed out from a loss he couldn't place._

_He turned away, opening doors on the other side of the hallway, not even looking inside before reaching another door he needed to close._

Echo was sitting on the floor of the roost, rubbing his arm. Samuel had just given him and the rest of the advanced class a flu shot against the bouts sweeping through the area, especially the street kids.

He didn't want his advanced class to get sick.

Still. He felt strange. Good strange. But strange.

Charlie sat down in front of him, the door closing behind him.

It was the middle of the day so they were alone. From the look on Charlie's face he wanted it that way.

"Hey Echo," Charlie said after sitting down. His voice had gone back to that gentle tone he used when Echo got skittish about something.

"What?" Echo asked, thinking he knew but hoping he was wrong.

"You've been jumpy today." Charlie said. "Twitchy. More than normal." Normal for Echo was not letting anyone but Charlie or Samuel touch him. "And you've been getting jumpier for a while." Charlie's voice softened. "And your nightmares have been really bad."

They both had nightmares. Everyone in the roost did.

But the longer Echo stayed safe in the roost and lived rather than just barely survived…

The defense of not having time to think was melting away.

A soft hand on his face and another odd hint of perfume. "What happened to you?" Charlie asked.

Echo didn't tell him then. He couldn't put words to it yet.

But three days later when tempers were running strangely thin in the roost someone broke the unspoken rule that you don't touch Echo without warning him you're there first and he accidentally broke the kid's nose in his violent response.

Echo left like a flash and Charlie chased after him.

Charlie talked Echo through the flashback, walking with him a ways before another set in. He felt twitchy, like his skin was a size too small and his senses were too strong. Charlie's hand on his shoulder gripped just a little too tight.

He had two more flashbacks that day. The second one leaving him silently sobbing into Charlie's leather coat.

Charlie just held him tight, told him it was alright, and whispered the words that had floated in the dark between them for the two months they'd shared a bunk.

Echo whispered them back.

As they lay in the dark together that night Charlie held him as Echo whispered black words into the Oblivion around them.

And Oblivion bore witness to Charlie's near silent vow to protect his Echo.

_He held onto the doorframe. He knew he needed to do this. He knew he could change back. It wasn't forever. It was just a mental trick. He was forgetting and remembering but not really. It was all just in his head. He was just drugged to the point he was hallucinating. He'd used his Liar's House before with barely more than repeating his old name as prep._

_He would get this memory back._

_And he was running out of time._

_He closed the door and moved toward the next door, faster._

_Time was running out._

A week after Samuel gave them their flu shots everyone in The Roost was sick. They were shaky and suffering from cold spells and fevers and Echo wasn't sure what else. He was the smallest in the group and whatever it was, was hitting him the hardest. He was one of the three or four that couldn't even get out of their bunks when Samuel asked them to all come out.

Eventually Charlie came back in, told them all that the flu vaccines Samuel had been sold were tainted, but the company had sent him two sets of shots to be taken one now and one in a week, that should more than take care of any illness that befell them and then a new set of vaccines for the week after.

Samuel apologized profusely and ordered Pizza, a rare treat, as well as gave them all the day off.

Charlie gave Echo his shot and Echo started feeling better in a little while. The strange but good feeling was back.

Stronger.

That night he and Charlie played basketball after the sun went down and most of the boys had dispersed.

Echo had grown a little in the six months since Charlie first brought him to the youth center but he was still tiny for his age and as much as Samuel was working to teach him to overcome that he was still the worst fighter of the advanced class.

And not just because his size gave him a disadvantage.

He'd learned early on something just… didn't feel right…. When he fought an actual opponent. Maybe it was all the beatings he'd taken leaving him with an aversion to violence. Maybe it had just always been against his nature but he always held back in a real fight.

Those two things combined and there were days when he wondered about his position as a member of the advanced class.

And there were days when he hated the fact the other students gave him a respectful berth not because he broke Whiskey's nose when Whiskey startled him (he really hoped no one ever found out that the first thing he'd done after getting outside was throw up and to this day felt nausea at the memory of the bone breaking beneath his fist) but because Charlie was the top student. Charlie was the biggest and the strongest fighter and when Charlie made it clear Echo was off limits, everyone paid attention.

Charlie was his protector and as good as it felt to feel safe, he hated needing that protection.

So here they were, playing basketball, at night, and Echo was trying to sort through his head.

And, like always, Charlie just knew.

"You know a lot of things make people strong Echo," Charlie said, sinking his shot. "Muscle, size, brains…" He ran after the ball and threw it to Echo. "But one thing most people forget is spirit."

"Not really in the mood for a pep talk Charlie," Echo muttered back, scoring a basket of his own. They weren't even playing anymore, just doing something together while they talked.

"Not a pep talk. The truth." Charlie caught the ball and held it, pulling Echo's attention to him. "Spirit is what Samuel sees in you. That's what got you your place in the roost and why Samuel's giving you so much attention. You don't have just physical strength. You survived… hell. You get knocked down but you always get back up."

Echo gave him a look like he was crazy. Charlie was one of three people on earth who knew everything that happened before he left home.

"Echo, you're alive now. You're still fighting. You tried to lay down because it was that or watch That Asshole hurt your sister."

Echo shook his head. "That was an excuse. I… I was just tired."

Charlie slung the ball under his arm and walked over to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Are you any less tired now?"

Echo looked up at Charlie, into blue eyes that meant safe, and considered the world he walked in, the fact even Charlie couldn't protect him from his dreams, that he was fighting himself to fight because this was the best chance he had to live through tomorrow.

That he didn't know what would happen the day after tomorrow.

He closed his eyes and let his head drop forward.

"No."

"But you're still here. You're still fighting. That's what makes you strong. You're fast. You've got a spider sense for danger and a freakishly good memory. But what you've got that makes you something special is you don't go… no… you don't stay down. You always get back up and keep fighting. That makes you stronger than the rest of us."

Echo smiled a little and Charlie tossed him the ball back.

Later, when they lay together in the roost, Echo whispered to the darkness. "When I'm with you I'm not as tired."

_He whispered a promise, he didn't know what, and closed the door. He opened another, watching in fast forward as the newest member of the youth center got kicked around again and again. He already knew to take a beating but now he was learning how to Not take one. How to fight back._

_That fire growing stronger every time he hit the ground._

_Anger began to show, fire bursting into life from the last embers hidden in ash._

_He moved to the next door._

Four days after the supposed cure they all started to feel sick again and by dawn of the fifth day Charlie was the only one able to even get out of his bunk to go and get Samuel. Samuel had rushed in, administering the second dose, promising to get a doctor in ASAP to get to the bottom of this and would close the youth center down a few days, just until they figured out what was going on.

The second dose seemed to do the trick. By that night they were all more or less mobile when the doctor Samuel promised came in and gave them each a proper checkup, stating they were all fit and should be getting better but prescribing another dose of medicine each. Their poor living conditions were likely weakening their body's natural immune systems.

But another dose should have them back to good health.

That night Whiskey got up long after lights out and told them all that they were fools if they believed everything was just as Samuel said. He was leaving while he still could.

They never heard from Whiskey again. Samuel spent the next two days looking worried and seemed distraught when he told them later that Whiskey had gone to a hospital, and that they had called child protective services and returned Whiskey to his father, who had beaten him to death.

None of them questioned it. They all knew Whiskey had run because of his father.

They all feared it happening to them.

Four days after the last dose Samuel gave them their final dose and reopened the youth center.

Congratulating his students for coming so far he started having them pair off to fight.

Echo did his best to find somewhere else to be whenever that was happening.

It took only two days for Samuel to confront him about it and Echo was surprised to find how understanding Samuel had been when Echo finally confessed it just felt wrong.

It was not an easy thing to hurt someone when you yourself have been hurt, Samuel had told him. Just give it time. Play it by ear.

And know Samuel would never respect him less if he chose the way of a pacifist.

_Something inside him rebelled, cried out, remembered. A warning was there. For the Boy. For That Echo. The sound of a slamming door echoed in his head even before he slammed the door shut._

_He didn't want to remember that loss. And now he didn't._

_He turned to go to the next door but the hallway was distorting, the floor buckling and tossing him. He staggered, nearly falling into the next open door._

Two days later the sickness hit the roost again and Samuel didn't offer any medicine.

When Charlie tried to get out to get help, one of the few still just barely walking, he'd found the door locked.

And the internal locking mechanism not working.

Hours later Echo had watched in a pained and twitching haze as two men came in and carried out November and his bunk mate Alpha. Figures seemed to move in a haze and Eliot felt Charlie being taken away from his side moments before rough hands lifted him from his resting place.

He moved his lips, half formed protests about not touching him dying before they left his throat.

The figures carried him down a flight of stairs into a basement he hadn't known the center had and deposited him unceremoniously on the floor.

A needle bit into his arm and he mentally apologized to Whiskey.

He'd been so very right.

He was still groggy and weak but starting to come to when Charlie (his jacket had a very distinctive feel and smell) helped him to sit up.

He looked around, his roost mates were sitting around, against the walls, all handcuffed to something keeping them in place.

_It wasn't right. Not like this. This was later and earlier not…_

"What?" Eliot asked, Charlie had said something. His entire world felt shaky. His head still spinning. They must have not given him a full dose of the drug.

The drug.

His mind clicked far too late.

His eyes unfocused, drifting. He couldn't make them focus. He needed to get back to the hallway. He couldn't get lost here. They had him again. He had to shut down his memories before they found the team. He leaned into Charlie's hand when it touched his forehead, liking the cool. His body was warm. Too warm.

"Try to relax," Charlie whispered, fear in his voice. "You have a fever and they didn't give you enough to pull you back."

"Hot," Eliot muttered. His skin was starting to burn and he moved to scratch at his arm, feeling tiny things bite up it and the feeling spreading. The world went crooked around him and he gasped, grabbing onto Charlie's hands as they moved to try to stop the scratching.

"Eliot…" Charlie's voice held a hint, more than a hint, of panic now, her British accent thick with fear. "Eliot I need you to stay with me."

Echo turned toward the voice, the world coming in and out as he stared at those blue eyes. He ran toward them even as arms tightened around him where he lay.

He opened his eyes, not knowing when he'd closed them again, stared up at brown eyes wide with horror. Gentle but shaking fingers ran through his hair. "That's it." She whispered. "Stay with me."

She looked away, glancing up and shaking her head. "No. Leave him alone."

_Rough hands grabbed his shoulders, dragging him upwards though his legs refused to support his weight. Pulling him toward the hallway. Toward the light beyond._

He watched, removed, as Not-Charlie got up and came at them, trying to fight off the ones holding him, and he moved his mouth to warn her away. She was going to get hurt and he had to protect her.

But Charlie was supposed to protect him and he blinked and Not-Charlie became Charlie before flickering back. The Hallway unraveled around him. Doors opened and closed and fell through a void in his mind.

Colors and sounds, the whole universe pressing in around him.

He closed his eyes, his stomach churning as a wave of nausea hit him before revolting entirely, trying to reject the nothing he had in his stomach.

Instinctive terror, learned hard and buried deep, roared through his mind as another hand grabbed his wrist and he watched Not-Charlie become Charlie once again. Samuel put his hand on Charlie's shoulder. Talking but saying something Echo couldn't understand.

Suddenly Whiskey stumbled into the space between them, face beaten black and blue, looking as dazed as Echo felt.

Wasn't Whiskey dead?

His hands are sticky.

He heard a click of a gun and looked up, seeing Samuel hold a gun to Charlie's temple. "Echo." The word reached through the haze of pain and drugs and fear. Samuel seemed so calm. Why was Samuel so calm? Why was he doing this to them? "The drugs I gave you are laying the ground for behavioral modification and neural programming. With time you will be unable to resist the commands I train into you. Those lessons start today."

That wasn't…

A needle slid into his arm again and he heard someone scream.

He couldn't even tell if it was him or someone else.

"I had such high hopes for you at first you know," Samuel said, though as Eliot watched he seemed to distort as much as the world around him. "So broken, so easily influenced, yet so disciplined in your training and with that little spark of something. But this… aversion to violence. I saw it even before you did. I was just about ready to give up on you… until I had a thought." A hand touched his chin, the sensation exploding across his mind like he'd been punched. "It's not really that you don't like violence is it? You feel it don't you? Just a hint of something powerful, something your step-daddy put there. Anger. Rage. Fear." The hand slid down his neck and Echo could see in his mind the face of That Man, could smell whiskey and cigars, could feel… "You've got a monster inside you."

He broke free, head butting forward, raising his hands to force the head down to meet his knee, dropping That Man to the floor. He followed, fists flying with fury but also cold and brutal accuracy, beating and beating until bone broke and skin ruptured and blood flew and the thing left was nothing more than a steain on the floor.

He blinked and just as suddenly Samuel was staring him in the face again, smiling, eyes beetle black and something terrifying about him, an aura of gore and a stink of rot.

"It's sleeping. You're so very good at keeping it sleeping." Samuel said. "You protect and you survive and you keep the monster sleeping." A gun pressed against the side of his head. "I normally use death as a motivator for our little training program here." Echo closed his eyes, waiting for the bullet, waiting for the end to finally come, waiting for peace and god knows he'd kept his promise to Willie. "But that wouldn't work with you." There was a regretful sigh and the gun pulled away.

"But you're a protector aren't you?" Echo opened his eyes, seeing the gun pressing against Charlie's head. "So here's how it's going to work. Let the monster wake up. Kill Whiskey. Or I'll kill Charlie."

The world fractured as the hands holding him let go. As he fell to the ground gunshots rang out in his head, bouncing all around them. He saw Charlie's head implode, a bullet ripping it apart, tearing the light from those eyes, tearing the one _safeherehome_he had left from this world.

He couldn't breathe.

Yellow light, the stench of beer.

He could remember. He couldn't con…

"You know how." Samuel's voice echoed, mixing in with the sounds of guns. "I trained you to kill. Just give into instincts."

"Echo…" Charlie called out and Echo braced his hands against the floor, pushing himself to his knees, setting his sights on Whiskey.

He couldn't.

He had to.

A hand closed into a fist and something inside of him just broke.

His heart swelled at the rush as he rose from the floor, blood pounding in his ears, muscles moving with precision trained into them these past few months.

A crunch of bone echoed throughout the basement and he pushed it away, like he'd learned to at the hand's of That Man, shutting it out and pulling back. His head snapped back, eyes locking on his tormentors.

They stumbled back. They could tell the difference.

"No, please." One pleaded, British accent odd for a local thug. "Come back."

He just smiled, showing teeth stained by his own blood.

Doors slamming, his world, his universe, his mind tearing apart and colliding back together, a noise beyond pain beyond anger released from his lungs. A creature without a name, a being with no direction besides the nightmares, real and imagined, that had shattered a conscious mind, broke the restraints holding it.

The chair he was tied to gave way and he lashed out.

A bright red burst of pain across it's shoulder, hot blood, and it turned. Violence learned far better than any other spoken language met the violence and the instincts of a killer, of a survivor, crushed the last resistance.

It rained red until it drowned the world and he surrendered any knowledge, any lingering consciousness, to the peaceful nothing It offered.


	4. She Don't Want the World

**Notes: **The title and some inspiration comes from the song She Don't Want the World by Three Doors Down.

* * *

><p><strong>Two Knight's<strong> Closing  
><em>She Don't Want the World<em>

* * *

><p><em>Los Angeles, CA<br>Sixteen years ago_

There were times when Tara wondered who she might have been or where she might have gone if she hadn't been chosen as part of The Project, or even if when it dispersed and the survivors were dishonorably discharged she had gone quietly into the night and slipped back into normal society.

And then there were other nights when she felt like this was fate.

Like all her life had lead her to the youth center in L.A., like she was meant to end up meeting those two desperate teenage boys and helping them bring down that second project and somehow transform her whole world.

That she was meant to be here, in a booth in a bar, with Charlie teasing Echo about the fact he was still too young to drink with them, the lights dim but the air warm, wrapped around them.

Her whole world in this little booth in this little bar in this huge city in this strange world of other people who weren't _them._

Who weren't _us._

The conversation flowed back and forth between them. Work, banter, sports, music, fake taunts, and completely understood subtext. They said everything and they said nothing and neither was really needed because they'd been through hell and back and now they'd found a place where, when they were together, the world stood still and they just were.

And even if Echo and Charlie had to hide the love that bound them together from a world that judged, and the three of them shared something beyond what might be considered traditional in any sense of the word.

Even if they all worked in the criminal underworld and the work they talked about so light-heartedly came very close to killing at least one of them on a regular basis.

Even if not one of them existed as far as most of the world was concerned and they would always be exiled to this underworld of thieves and conmen.

Even despite all of that, she knew on nights like tonight that somehow she had found _home, _and _family, _and the answers to all those questions that had been floating around her head for the twenty three years she'd been alive before she heard that Samuel was up to no good in L.A.

She looked toward the future, seeing their life stretch out and on just like this.

And she didn't think she could think of any other way she'd rather have it.

_Los Angeles, CA  
>Present Day<em>

Tara stirred from the daydream, turning away from the boarded up building that had once been a small bar patronized by locals and three young thieves.

It had been a long time since she'd let herself remember those days. For a long time it had been painful, remembering how powerful that sense of belonging was in the face of a world where she knew she'd probably never find it again. Even if she'd found some respite with Sophie and learning the art of the con and much more and even with the connection she had maintained with Charlie through the years, she knew she'd never be able to go back there.

It had taken a long time but she'd learned to let go of that, learned the fine art of being alone as Echo had once called it.

And she'd shut those memories away where they wouldn't remind her of what she'd lost.

But the team… there were some days when the team almost reminded her of Charlie and Echo, when she watched Eliot, Parker, and Hardison and had to blink away a memory.

Even before Charlie had confirmed her suspicions about Eliot.

And now with all of this…

She shook her head, shaking off the memory, the past, and the train of thought entirely. She needed to focus and keep her head in the game and remember that when all of this was over Eliot would probably still have no memory of that and really she should let it stay that way.

It had practically been Charlie's dying wish to let it stay that way.

Just keep moving forward, she told herself again, keep putting one foot in front of the other and don't look back. The usual drill.

She turned away and continued down the street, keeping to the safety of the shadows. It was early in the morning, long before the sun would rise, and she was killing time before Nate got here, too restless to sleep and not wanting to dream anyway…

She stopped halfway through a thought suddenly getting the sense that she was being watched.

She continued down the street, not giving away that she was aware that anything was amiss but searching about for signs of a tail.

She didn't expect to turn the corner and walk almost straight into someone.

He was a man, mid-thirties, strong build, skin tone suggesting far eastern origins.

Something about the face seemed familiar.

"Bravo?" she asked, the word slipping past her lips in surprise. She hadn't seen the boy in close to twenty years but she was almost sure.

He nodded. "Hello Tara."

A smile spread across her face. "What are you doing here? Last I heard from Charlie you were pulling that retrieval in Peru. How'd you end up in L.A.?"

"Same as you I'd guess." His smile faded. "Samuel."

"You heard about Charlie then," Tara stated. "Well as glad as I am to see you you should probably get out of town. From what I can tell Samuel's up to his usual and I don't need you getting caught in the cross fire."

He shook his head, a strange look on his face as he reached a hand out to settle on her shoulder.

She could feel him shaking.

Her eyes widened as he whispered; "It's a little late for that."

Tara stood her ground. Turning to run would only trigger his conditioning into full force. She took a breath ready to say the safe word, put him down without hurting him and get the hell away.

"I'm the first one he found," Bravo said, trying to force himself to hold on a little longer. In the dim light of the street lamps she could see his pupils dilating. "Charlie found me. Tried to get me out again…my fault he's..." He trailed off, mind starting to slip away and Tara reached out to close a hand around his, pulling him back just a little longer. Bravo blinked at her. "Only one he found… but he heard… talked about Echo coming back. Think Echo's in LA." Bravo's eyes widened. "Find him first."

Before Tara could react the switch in Bravo's head flipped and his other hand hit her hard in the solar plexus, knocking the air out of her lungs.

She stumbled back, trying to pull in a gasp of air enough to say the safe words, take Bravo down, but he moved with her. A second blow to her stomach, one to her shoulder, she barely avoided the legs trying to sweep her feet out from under her.

Like Eliot, Bravo had gone into the hitter's line and his fighting skills had only improved over the years.

A fifth blow landed and she felt a rib nearly give way, she was keeping her guard up so he couldn't strike a knockout blow but faltering that for even a second would probably result in her getting taken down.

And she wouldn't last long like this.

She sidestepped the next blow, striking out with her left arm. "Bravo. Check in," She commanded, her voice as stable as she could manage as Bravo caught her arm, twisting as he struck the next blow.

Breath almost caught in her throat as she felt something in her shoulder jerk, pop, and tear but she bit down the noise of pain as Bravo stilled just for a moment, conditioning kicking in. "Somno. At ease Student."

She watched as Bravo's eyes unfocused, faltering, before he seemed to start to shake it off.

Well. Fuck.

"Somno. At ease Student" She repeated, taking a careful step forward, reaching out a hand to run through his hair.

It was a fucking creepy thing about Samuel but he tended to use physical gestures to calm the students, she'd learned from Echo and Charlie gentle physical contact could increase the effectiveness of a safeword.

And if that didn't work she'd be lined up to knock him out the old fashioned way.

"At ea-" Her words left in a strangled shout as Bravo's hand shot out, the blade in it digging into her side before she even registered it. Not letting herself react to the sudden trauma she jerked forward, striking out as hard and fast as she could, knocking Bravo out.

She didn't allow herself time to catch her breath, adrenalin was masking a good deal of the pain she should be in and the moment that faded her functionality would quickly reduce.

Her shoulder needed to be popped back into place and she needed to stop the bleeding from the knife wound and she needed to get far away from here before Bravo came to or someone came looking for him.

She reached for her cell phone, fumbling with it before finding the number she'd never thought she'd actually use.

She hesitated only a second, she already knew what her other options were and this was the best of bad options.

"Hello?" The voice answered after the third ring, sleep slurred but not angry.

"Maggie?" Tara asked. "Hey. I'm in L.A. and I…"

"You're hurt and the team can't get you?" Maggie asked, already sounding more awake.

Tara would have laughed, the situation seemed absurdly funny somehow, but she was pretty sure it would hurt and that the fact it seemed so funny was probably a bad sign. "Yeah. Nate won't get here 'til morning. No one else is coming."

"Where are you?" She asked. "And I suppose calling you an ambulance isn't an option." It was a statement not a question.

Tara looked around, trying to find somewhere safe... well safer, to hole up while Maggie got there.

The bar.

She gave the location of the old bar, already moving.

"I'm on my way," Maggie told her and she must have sounded bad if Maggie's voice was any indication. "But I'm on the far side of the city. It may be awhile."

Tara said something, she didn't remember what seconds after she said it, and hung up. Her eyes focused further up the street in the direction of her destination.

_The usual drill._

**oOo**

Later she wouldn't really remember the long walk to the bar, or how much time it took, or how exactly she broke into the place.

She'd only vaguely remember instinctively making her way to the corner where Their booth had once sat, leaning against the wall and trying to do what she could for her injuries.

She'd remember the bright _flashpain_ of relocating her shoulder, the slow and deadly burn of the wound in her side and the way it would flare white hot at odd times.

She'd remember her head growing light and her limbs growing heavy and how she'd wondered how much better she'd be fairing if she'd eaten or slept at all in the past forty eight hours.

She'd remember looking up and seeing Echo there, looking worried, and knowing that the fact she was hallucinating was Not Good with capital letters and Hardison's voice providing extra emphasis.

She'd remember laughter, the oddly hysteric kind, when she realized Hardison had hacked his way into her brain with the others and she needed to spend less time with the team. Her ribs and side then made her pay for breaking the shallow breathing pattern and she wondered if maybe she did have a broken rib.

Then Charlie was there at her side, telling her the same thing he always did, and she muttered back that yeah, she knew, focus on the usual.

Then Echo curled in next to her and Charlie sat down and she closed her eyes, focusing on breathing.

The usual drill.

**oOo**

In the back of their minds they'd known something was wrong. Their fears had already aided the roll call of worst case scenarios that had been playing out in their minds in the time since they found Echo's apartment unlocked and signs of a struggle inside.

Rationally, they'd known the moment they saw the police tape what they'd find.

They had to wait until the police moved on. They both had fake identities but neither would hold up for long.

While they were waiting they saw the body bag brought out by the cops, the right size for Echo.

They also saw two rookie cops throwing up outside.

They'd known what had happened.

But now they were standing here, staring at a blood stain on concrete, scuff marks from where a chair had been, the smell of burnt flesh and piss making even them gag.

In the morning they'd con their way into the police precinct, find out that among the evidence collected was half a set of Dog Tags belonging to Tara Cole, an ex-marine killed in a drive-by shooting three years before.

They'd learn that one body had been found, too mutilated for identification of any kind.

But just in that moment they stood there and stared at that blood stain and muttered under their breaths, like a prayer, like the only mantra that would carry them through the coming days, like a spell to summon the one they'd lost back to them.

"_The usual drill."_

**oOo**

"Be careful out there," he told her, the distance and bad connection distorting his voice but it could have made it unintelligible and she still would have known that was what he said. It was what Charlie always told her when she was somewhere where she could call him.

"You too," she answered back, taking in a breath, the silence waiting for words but she couldn't fill it. The words died with Echo. They both know it. That's why she was Europe and he was in America and they hadn't seen each other since they left L.A. four years ago.

Another moment, another silence, and then a click and she hung up the phone, exiting the phone booth and turning back to Charlotte, her friend and mentor giving her a sort of indulging but kind smile. "What's your brother been up to this week?"

Tara shrugged. "He's in Kentucky on business." She didn't explain the business involved heads that needed busting and an ex-student that had found a bit more trouble that he could deal with alone.

She fell into step beside Charlotte, the two of them making their way down the streets of London toward their next destination. With the long con Charlotte was working she couldn't really play many other roles without risking her cover and Tara had needed time, experience, and teaching to break out of the role of a hitter with basic spy training. Their meeting and the partnership that followed had been lucrative.

Their friendship had been beyond what either had expected.

"You miss him," Charlotte said, casually like they were talking about the weather but with the same sincere empathy Tara *had* to learn how to fake.

"I miss them both," she admitted. "Every so often I think I'm moving on and then… at the airport just yesterday I thought I saw Echo but…" She sighed and shook her head. "I just… need to remind myself of the usual."

"The usual?" Charlotte asked.

"Something Echo used to say," Tara responded. "When things got bad, he'd tell us to just focus on the usual. Just keep walking forward."

Charlotte smiled, nodding in approval. "Well then. I suppose now's as good a time as any for me to keep my promise."

It was a distraction, Tara knew that, but she was grateful for it none the less. "Now you're going to explain?"

"I told you I would sooner or later," Charlotte countered, delaying a moment longer for the art of the delay. "And someone has to teach you that Neuro linguistics don't work like you think they do."

**oOo**

She was warm. It rushed through her veins, swelled in her chest, pulled her in and held her.

Like strong arms holding her tight she was settled in amongst them, Echo to her right, Sophie to her left, Charlie leaning on the back of the booth, hands resting on her shoulders. The team sat around them, Nate and Eliot chatting, Parker and Hardison bickering, Sophie calling over to Nate about something and Eliot interjecting into the play fight between Parker and Hardison.

It was an unbroken circle.

Charlie leaned down, whispering in her ear words she couldn't make out.

**oOo**

The words echoed through her mind, still too distant to make out, as Tara fought to open her eyes. Soft sheets against the skin of her arms told her she was in a bed.

Pain flaring from her injuries reminded her of what had happened.

Her eyes opened quickly, she had to warn Nate, had to find Eliot, had to do something before things spiraled further out of control.

She sat up, ignoring the white hot flare of pain.

A hand touched her good shoulder, the gentle pressure mixing with a sudden wave of dizziness to force her to lie down again.

"Take it easy," Maggie told her. "I called Hardison, he'll let Nate know you won't be able to meet him as soon as he lands. " Tara turned, seeing her sitting in a chair beside the bed, feeling the sling securing her relocated arm and the bandages around the knife wound. "You should really let me take you to a hospital. I've picked up a lot of first aid but stitching a knife wound…"

Tara winced. "If you've got what I need I can do it myself."

"With only one good hand?" Maggie asked, incredulous, but standing anyway. Maggie had a point. "Could you tell me what to do?"

It was the best of bad choices.

Tara nodded, giving Maggie the list of things she'd need that could be found in a normal home, ending with a request for the strongest type of alcohol she kept on hand.

Maggie at the very least seemed to get the point of that and came back with the supplies and a shot of something Tara didn't take the time to process what it was before knocking it back, letting the burn down her throat and the weight of it in her stomach dampen the fire from her injuries.

Not enough, not nearly enough, but it would have to do.

Maggie was following her early instructions, getting ready, her hands shaking just a little bit, but even then she still looked over to Tara, forcing an almost reassuring smile. "Don't worry, just remember to do the usual; just keep breathing. It'll be alright."

Tara didn't know who Maggie was really reassuring, or where she'd learned Echo's old advice, but she took it as a comfort, reminding herself to keep breathing, keep walking forward.

She leaned her head back and gave Maggie the first instruction.


	5. How to Save a Life

**Notes: **Title comes from How to Save a Life by The Fray

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter<strong> Five  
><em>How to Save a Life<em>

* * *

><p>"<em>Nathan!" Sterling called out, waving his arm to catch the man's attention through the crowds of the LA airport. The man had just gotten off an overnight flight from Tokyo and for all his detective skills he'd never done well on long flights.<em>

_Not to mention he had every reason to be worried._

_He watched Nate turn, seeing him, and the color drained from his friend's face. He all but shoved his way through the crowd, meeting Sterling. _

"_Maggie?" Nate asked, breathlessly. Sterling knew yesterday he'd been on a case in a remote area of Japan and all he'd gotten was word that he needed to come home immediately. Now seeing it was Sterling not Maggie come…_

"_Maggie's fine," he reassured, seeing relief come and be replaced by fear again just as quickly. _

"…_Sam?"_

_Sterling let out a breath, looking around for a bench. He didn't want to have this conversation, but he'd been the one Maggie had called when she'd been forced to rush Sam to the emergency room. He'd been there when the doctors explained. _

_And Maggie was in no condition to repeat what they'd been told._

_He put a hand on Nate's arm, motioning toward the bench. "We need to talk." _

It was ironic, really, how they had ended up back here. In this airport. In this area outside the same gate.

"Nathan," he called out, watching the man turn. He looked pale and haggard as if he'd just gotten off another overnight flight instead of the red eye from Boston. Odd.

He had the guards on call and supporting officers from the local precinct nearby ready if Nate were to try to run but he knew he wouldn't need them. Nate turned at the sound of his voice and came toward him, like he wasn't a wanted fugitive in L.A..

"What is it Sterling?" Nate asked, his voice almost casual with just a hint of annoyance, like Sterling had shouted an embarrassing nickname to get his attention.

Sterling opened the folder he was holding, showing pictures of Spencer and Sophie leaving the international terminal, timestamped the night before. "We need to talk."

Nate for his part didn't react outwardly, hell if Sterling hadn't known him like he did he might have thought Nate had been the one to send them to L.A.

But he knew Nate, recognized the faintest hints of surprise.

Sophie and Eliot were together and had gone to L.A. on their own. Tara had arrived a few days ago and now Nate…

Something was going on and Sterling had a feeling he knew what it was.

Nate turned to go and Sterling put a hand on his shoulder, nodding to the officers to close rank. "Come on Nate, it's just a little sit down."

Nate stared at him and he smiled back.

**oOo**

"What do you want Sterling?" Nate asked once they were sitting in one of the TSA's interview rooms.

Sterling put the folder on the table, a photo of a corpse tagged as Charlie November India, the picture of Spencer and Sophie, the first carrying a duffle bag, the second dragging a suitcase and walking almost protectively close to Spencer, an incident report, and a handful of files he'd gathered for the case he was working.

He pulled out the last one, a picture of Samuel Kent. "Samuel Kent, gun runner, smuggler, also done a bit of human trafficking and source of a designer drug that hit France a few years ago. Started as a military scientist before being dishonorably discharged, left the states after a stay in L.A., returned a little over six months ago."

"You're here for Interpol," Nate stated. "First big case." He gave a almost regretful look. "Six months, you're having a bit of difficulty. That must be really frustrating."

Sterling mentally rolled his eyes. "I know you're here to take him down. I know you know he spent his last trip to L.A. trying to make a supersoldier and that Tara helped bust up his project," Nate looked up a little too fast. "Tara? Went to visit his most recent victim in the morgue. Oh and..." He opened his other file, pulling out a picture and placing it squarely in front of Nate. "I know your boy Eliot Spencer was one of Kent's victims the last time he was here."

Nate looked down at the picture, a teenaged Eliot sitting among a group of kids next to a signpost for the New Sparks Youth Center, Samuel Kent standing behind them.

The shock on Nate's face was real.

He hadn't known.

"What. Do. You. Want." Nate repeated, anger in his voice and really Sterling wasn't surprised.

"I know you're in town to take him down," Sterling sat down across from Nate. "I would like you and your team to help me take him." Nate tensed, probably about to remind him of Kiev when Sterling added. "You can't use Spencer for this game, Kent knows him and knows how to use him against you. He knows Tara. Sophie left you because she was off her game and I don't know what's going on but frankly I doubt she's back on it yet. So that leaves your team with an insane thief, a hacker, and a mastermind who's just found out the mark abused and tortured his lover for years."

Nate tensed.

Oh, he'd thought Sterling didn't know. Adorable.

"Kent isn't some run of the mill corrupt executive, Nate. He's ex-military, paranoid, and very smart. Your crackpot team goes at this half-assed and he'll go back into the woodwork and stay there. He's a ghost, this is the first time we've gotten a lead on him."

Nate stared back at him, unimpressed, uncaring, and not for the first time Sterling wondered why he even bothered anymore.

"_Maggie, Maggie, calm down. Sam needs you calm." Like always that worked wonders to get the woman to take a few deep breaths and get a hold of herself. Even if Sterling was pretty sure Sam was still out cold from today's treatment, mothers would react like mothers. "You just focus on your son. I'll find Nate." _

_And beat his sorry ass for making me get up at three in the morning to go looking for it._

_He hit the closest bars first, a lot of them already closed, then spiraled out, looking for one of those damn Irish pubs Nate liked so much. _

_He found Nate stumbling outside of the fourth one. Picked him up. Took him back home. Didn't murder the man for vomiting in his back seat (which in itself Sterling was sure earned him a bloody medal of honor. These seats were Italian leather) and got him home._

_Maggie took over Nate duties and Sterling found himself leaning in the doorway to Sam's bedroom, watching the too small form lying too still in the bed._

_He remembered Sam's birthday party eight months ago, he'd stopped by to brief Nate on a case they'd be leaving for in the morning and ended up staying until the end. _

_He would never admit it but the sight of this boy and his friends running amok in the backyard laughing like the world was nothing but summers and friends and caring mothers and doting fathers… The smile on Nate's face…_

_It had made Sterling smile, and mentally promise not to harass his friend about being That Father anymore._

_Sterling didn't make wishes. He was a practical adult who kept his goals oriented toward things he could succeed on his own one way or another._

_But when he turned to go he found something halfway between a prayer and command leaving his lips at a whisper. _

"_Get __better __Sam.__"_

Nate's cell rang and Sterling sat back, indicating the man could take it. A show of faith.

Plus they weren't getting anywhere staring at each other.

"Hardison? Not a good time." Nate started. "Wai… Where? Alright. I'm having a chat with Sterling, he's in town. Looks like Eliot and Sophie are together and came here. Get in touch with them."

Nate really hadn't known they were in town. Interesting.

Nate made a few neutral comments as Hardison spoke on the other side of the phone before ending the call.

"Here's my proposal." Sterling said once he had Nate's attention again. "You and I work together to bring down Samuel Kent. With our combined intel it shouldn't be that difficult to pin him down and take him into custody. Provided your team behaves themselves off the job and Kent is still alive to be taken into custody I will overlook any… indiscretions committed by your associates in the process."

"And if I say no?" Nate met his eyes with that look of rage Sterling had seen boiling in there for years before it exploded.

"Then I let you walk out of here, but if we meet again I'll treat you like the criminal you behave. If your crew is there when the hammer falls I won't hesitate to take in anyone I can catch."

_He's sitting with Nate at Sam's grave. He doesn't know what to say or even do. The glass of scotch is in his hand, and he feels like he should pass it to Nate but Nate's already more drunk than Sterling thinks is wise for men who know as much and have as many enemies as they do._

_But it's been less than a week since Nate buried his son so Sterling is willing to let that go and sit here and make sure Nate doesn't do anything stupid._

_For the moment Nate is ranting, only half coherently, about how this was Blackpool's fault and as he rants the rage left to boil all his life, tempered by Maggie, and Sam, and that mysterious woman that put a smile on Nate's face even if Sterling knew it wasn't an affair, and even Eliot Spencer and the games of chess those two played that Nate thought Sterling didn't know about._

_That rage was boiling over._

_And suddenly Nate is asking him for help. To get revenge on Blackpool. For Sam. For him. Nate knows if he can get in touch with Eliot he could get the Hitter to kill Blackpool but that isn't enough. He wants to make the man who took his son suffer._

_Sterling set down the glass and stands, stepping in front of Nate, grabbing the man by his collar._

"_Nate, if Blackpool is responsible, I'll help you do this the right way. We'll go through the courts. I can get a list of the judges with children and make sure your case is seen by one. I can help you get the documents you need. Our chances are good. We can make Blackpool pay."_

"_Not good enough," Nate shouted, shoving him away, falling back onto the bench unsteadily._

"_I won't see you become what we hunt. Do you want to become your father?"_

"_I am not a thief!"_

"_Then don't behave like one."_

_Silence from Nate._

"_If you want my help taking down Blackpool by the law and courts you'll have it..." He didn't add out loud even if it cost him his job, but it was unspoken in the air. Nate had lost his son, was losing his mind. Sterling could easily find a new job and he owed Nate this much. "But if you become what we've hunted then you and I are through. I won't hesitate to take you down."_

"_Leave." Nate said, his voice cold as stone and steel but like breaking glass._

_Sterling walked away, and behind him he heard the shattering of their glass against a gravestone._

"Why should I believe you?" Nate hissed. "Why should I believe anything you say?"

Sterling took a calming breath, resisting the urge to throttle his former friend. It really wouldn't help the circumstances and Spencer coming after him would throw another unnecessary wrench in the works.

"I know you've cast me as the sheriff of Nottingham in your team's lovely little Robin Hood fantasy but I am not Blackpool, Nate. I am an honorable man. I hunt criminals." He pick up one unopened folder and spread the pictures across the table top. Decade old autopsy photos of over a dozen teenage boys, some barely even into puberty, emaciated, beaten, scared, ligature marks on their wrists, and track marks in the crooks of their arms. "And Samuel Kent is a Sick Bastard who needs to be taken off the streets before he does this again."

Nate looked at him, surprised, maybe it was finally sinking into Nate's thick head that one could be intent on using the courts to stop crime and still actually be against crime.

He let his voice soften just a little. He was trying to reel Nate in and that had always required a delicate touch. "Help me bring Kent to justice and your team walks away, just this once. I'll even throw in losing the files I have on "Echo", if all goes well. Spare your team the trouble of stealing them next week."

"If I didn't know better Sterling I'd say you've found a bit of compassion for a criminal."

"Spencer made his own choices and your team would do well to not think of one of the world's most dangerous men as a victim of circumstance. You don't become who Spencer is without walking that path knowingly and willingly." He hesitated just one moment, seeing the picture of the hitter as a underfed teen out of the corner of his eye, his own memory and mind not letting him keep the adult and the broken teen put through hell as separate as he'd like. "However…" He stopped himself.

He was beginning to think like Nate.

"I'll need time," Nate said. "To get everyone back together and talk over your proposal."

"You've got twelve hours Nate," Sterling answered, the threat clear in his voice as he wrote down the number for an untraceable cellphone on a piece of paper and slid it across the table. "Have an answer for me by then."

He stood and walked for the door, motioning for Ford to be allowed to leave.

Sometimes he wondered why he bothered with this anymore.

But he knew, in a few days, when he could put Kent behind bars and this whole bloody mess behind him and move onto some other thing that didn't involve children and his old partner...

He could get back to enjoying his job and he'd probably remember.


	6. Learning to Fall

**Notes: **Title comes from the song Learning to Fall from Martina McBride.  
>This chapter is mostly HardisonParker.

* * *

><p><strong>Two Knight's<strong> **Closing**  
><em>Learning to Fall<em>**  
><strong>

* * *

><p><em>New York NY,<br>Midnight_

Parker was in the dark.

She knew, on one level, that she was in a hotel room in New York, that she'd just closed the curtains and turned off all the lights and unplugged everything and that her shin hurt because she'd only arrived this afternoon and Hardison got her a big room with lots of stuff that she hadn't bothered to memorize because she was getting sloppy and was distracted.

She knew all of that, but if she sat very still she could pretend she was in her roost back in the castle (she'd been calling their building that since she heard Hardison say he'd castled their king. She always wanted to live in a castle) and that today never happened.

Sophie had tried to teach her how to make things not go wrong but Parker had made them go wrong anyway.

Now she missed Sophie along with feeling like she'd gone splat.

It was kind of like she'd gone splat and now people were walking over her with their pointy high heels.

She hated New York.

She'd thought coming here would be okay. After she left her last foster family, after Mr. Parker taught her about jumping off buildings (alright, facing her fears, but it was like jumping off buildings), she'd come here. After she came here she met Archie. Good things happened in New York.

And there were lots of buildings to repel from and lots and lots of things to steal.

But she decided, right now, she hated New York.

Outside, in the main room of their suite, she could hear Hardison moving around, waiting for her to stop being crazy. She could almost hear Eliot in her head telling her now was no time for Crazy.

Well she was crazy and if she stayed in here long enough maybe Hardison would just realize she was crazy and stop poking at it and just leave. That would be best right? She'd already gone splat. She didn't want to go splat again.

She wiped at the stupid eyeliner and mascara she'd put on because Sophie had said it made her look good and Parker had tried to be normal.

Tried really, really hard.

But she just…

They'd had fun. She didn't get the point of paying for the tickets to see the funny play with all the singing and the knights of Camelot (and she knows the story does not go like that. Archie liked the classics and Parker liked how expensive authentic Arthurian art was) but Hardison said the point was him paying for the tickets and Sophie had told her that meant it was a date which was weird but at least she didn't have to wear plants on her wrist or anything like that. And she did like the cows and coconuts even if the murderous bunny was an insult to her sensibilities.

And afterwards Hardison had taken her to dinner in a really tall building and the food wasn't as good as Eliot's but she didn't say that because she kinda thought it wasn't nice, maybe, and they didn't have thirty-nine story drops right outside the window next to their table at Nate's which kind of made up for having to eat vegetables that Eliot hadn't made the way she liked.

It had been normal and kind of boring (though the drop did help) but Hardison kept looking at her like Eliot sometimes looked at Nate and it made her insides feel like maybe she was eating the vegetables Eliot had made just the way she liked.

Then Hardison took her to the roof and there was her harness stuff all set up and his harness stuff and it should have been…

Then things went wrong.

**oOo**

There were some things Hardison knew for certain.

How he ended up here was not one of them.

Everything had gone according to plan, better than according to plan.

And then…

He'd frozen. He hadn't known what to say, or if he should say anything at all.

He had had plans for this. A fun week (five days) of seeing the sights and the occasional theft, showing Parker what normal dating (or as close to it as millionaire thieves came) was, and ending the week by pulling a big heist on one of the scumbags on Nate's list and telling Parker he loved her.

It would have been like a James Bond flick but better.

Instead he'd frozen at the wrong moment and Parker had gone running and now she was hiding in her room and he didn't know what to do.

He'd been planning this for sweeks/s months (years). A show Parker might actually like. Dinner at a place that she might like. Keeping it casual. Keeping it cool.

He'd even left every electronic device of his in the room except for his emergency smart phone. That was a big deal for him.

And everything had been set up and perfect and they'd been out on the roof of the building. He'd checked, double checked, and triple checked the gear and knots and rope and everything.

Months ago in Kentucky Parker had asked him if he'd go rappelling with her. He had thought he could be the good, thoughtful, bo-… whatever he is and they could go repelling together here.

But he'd brought her up to the roof and told her that they could go repelling now.

And Parker had asked him if he'd ever asked Eliot what it was like to be with Nate.

She'd told him that Eliot said it was like going rappelling. It was about taking a flying leap off a building and falling and hoping you get caught and don't go splat.

That was what being with Nate was like. What being…

It had sunk in and she'd taken a deep breath and asked him to go rappelling with her.

And he'd just stared back.

He'd just freaking stared back at her.

She'd come as close to using the L word as she'd probably ever be able to go and he hadn't said anything.

And then she'd run and he'd stood there like the mother of all idiots he was, and now he was standing here, in their hotel room, staring at his phone like it would solve all his problems.

But he can't hack Parker, or time.

All he can do is stand here and wait for the next in the long series of calls that have bounced around the world today. Sophie, Eliot, Tara, and Nate are all in or headed for L.A.. There was something going on but everyone was telling them to lay low and stay out of it.

All he can do is try to fix things.

Maybe it's the fact it was L.A., of all places, that they were heading back to, and that brought back memories. Or maybe it was just…

What? That he was finally making his move after two years? More?

It seemed like they'd been together for a lifetime but really it hadn't been that long since they were getting used to sharing offices. It was some strange break in space time in his head where it seems just yesterday that Parker was this unknowable enigma of crazy and sexy but at the same time it had been impossibly long since the incident with Eliot's knives, his hair, and that paper clip, when Hardison had first realized her perspective was just skewed. You had to adjust your viewpoint to fit her frame of reference and you'd be just fine.

Of course getting it right was the hard part and he kept on getting so used to making the switch automatically he'd forget once in awhile.

He stopped pacing and sat down at the desk, poking idly through files he'd acquired in preparation for their end of date heist.

And found himself fiddling with the paperclip in the corner.

He could sit out here all night, wishing he could hack time, thinking about how he got here only to fuck up, and waiting for a call that wouldn't come until the morning.

Or he could man up and just… try talking to her.

He got up and turned to head for the door before stopping and retrieving the paper clip. He needed whatever talismans for good luck he could get.

And it would be useful if she'd locked the door.

**oOo**

"Hey," Hardison said from the door, softly, like he was trying to not spook her like Eliot taught her to not spook horses. "Can I come in?"

"Yeah," she answered, because she only runs away from Sterling and people Eliot tells her to and when she's trying to get away from a heist. She doesn't run from Hardison.

Even if she just had.

The door opened and she blinked against the light intruding into the room. Hardison partially closed the door behind him before making his way over to sit in front of her. "So…" He couldn't seem to find any words.

She didn't really have any either.

"I thought I locked the door," she muttered after a too long pause.

Hardison held out his hand, opening it to show a paper clip. "Picked it. Been practicing. And these doors are easy."

The paper clip in his hand triggered something, a memory; teasing it out of the chaos boxed up and classified as the general "Past" in her head with uncertain specifications.

"Do you remember when Eliot tried to kill you with a paper clip?" she asked.

Hardison smiled at her. "Yeah. I remember, it was for something you did though."

Parker made a face. "It wasn't me," she repeated, reaching out to take the paper clip from him, adding, "And you thought it would be a good idea."

Another pause. Another silence.

"It's been forever," Parker said, carefully bending the paper clip back to it's original shape. But it looked wrong. She tried bending it back.

Hardison was quiet after that, watching her a moment before gently taking the paper clip out of her hands, twisting it so it was the way it had been and it looked right.

"It has been forever," Hardison agreed. Another pause. She played with the paper clip. Mostly because otherwise she'd have to look at him and... yeah.

She wasn't sure what she should say now.

She took a deep breath. She should have just said it earlier. She should have just not been crazy. Because Hardison understood her crazy and the paper clip proved it and everything else did and and…

"I love you," she blurted.

"I'm rappelling with you," Hardison said at the same time.

There was a long moment of stunned, shocked, silence. They stared at each other. The words registering.

Parker felt her pulse race and her stomach leap and turn like she was flying through the air waiting for the back up system to catch on the line and suddenly just…

It caught her, and she was there, and her insides swirled and mixed back together like hot coco and Eliot's vegetables and Sophie's perfume and Nate's little grin and question about if she's done this before and other things. Better things. If there were even better things than all of those, this is what it felt like.

"I'm gonna kiss you now okay?" Hardison asked.

"Hell yeah!" Parker replied and she wouldn't remember the specifics later but somehow she ended up in Hardison's lap and he kissed her and she decided he needed a breath mint before their next make out session, but it would do for now.

And he was soft and hard in the right places and his hands felt nice and once he got over the shock he at least knew how to kiss her right and…

Later, much later, when he was asleep and she was trying to because Sophie told her it was bad to leave in these situations, she'd admit that; this feeling?

It was, maybe, better than rappelling.

She rolled over and Hardison reached out in his sleep, hand finding her, arm winding around her waist, pulling her closer.

And she didn't want to wake Hardison up so she stayed.

And, maybe, she closed her eyes and didn't just pretend to fall asleep.

**oOo**

When Hardison's cell phone rang at ten in the morning, he decided that the universe officially sucked. He was exhausted and tired and his right arm was asleep and worse he'd been woken from possibly the best dream ever.

And he had hair in his mouth.

That registering brought him aware of the fact his arms were around someone and that someone was possibly Parker and…

Oh. No. Freaking out and self congratulations would both have to wait until after he answered his cell phone.

He rolled over, reaching for it, trying to extract himself from Parker without waking her. She seemed dead to the world asleep, cuddling her pillow and using his arm as a replacement for it.

"What's up Tara?" he asked in a whisper, having caught her name on the caller ID.

"Hardison, it's Maggie." What? "Tara was attacked last night. She called me and I got her to safety but Nate's expecting her to meet him. There's something going on and I can't get in touch with Nate, Eliot, or Sophie."

Hardison fought the surge of fear. "Nate's probably in the air. Eliot and Sophie are flying into L.A. from London but the tickets I got them should have had them there hours ago." His sleep hazed mind fumbled with the time zone changes. "I think."

"They're in L.A.?" she asked, a note of relief. "I'll call them again then. I think Tara might need more medical help than I can give her."

"You still living at the same address?" he asked, mentally nodding when she confirmed it. "I'll call them. They've both been on leave so you might have the wrong numbers." It only made sense. "I'll send them your way and get in touch with Nate." He did the math in his head. "His flight should get in soon."

He said goodbye to Maggie, too much going on for small talk, and hung up. Carefully he finished extracting himself from Parker and slipped out of the room to make the rest of his calls.

Eliot didn't answer his phone, Sophie didn't answer hers either. He tried pulling up the locations of their phones.

Disconnected. Signal lost.

"Okay. Not the time to start panicking."

"What's wrong?" Parker asked from behind him and Hardison turned. He paused, taking a minute to just enjoy the fine show that was a completely naked Parker (that he totally could look at all he wanted) coming down to perch on the desk next to him.

But no. Back to business. "Tara was attacked in Los Angeles. Maggie's looking after her but it sounded like she's hurt pretty bad. Eliot and Sophie got to L.A. early this morning but they're off the grid." He shook his head. "I'm gonna call Nate."

Back when they were still in L.A., actually right around the paper clip incident, Eliot had gotten captured buying them time to get out of a job gone south. After the team got him back, Nate had convinced Eliot to let them implant a tracking device. Something that had a program as close to hack proof as Hardison could make it, was completely inactive until triggered, and was programmed so that a single incorrect passkey entered would cause the tracker to permanently disengage.

And only Nate and Eliot knew the password.

As long as Eliot was still in L.A., they'd be able to find him.

"Nate," Hardison said once Nate had answered. "It's not a good time for me either but Tara was attacked and-"

Nate mentioned Sterling. He was having a chat with Sterling.

Not good.

"I know Sophie and Eliot are here. I arranged for their tickets. I can't get in touch with them..."

Nate made a neutral remark. Sterling was listening to his side of the conversation apparently.

"Okay, you get away from Sterling ASAP. I need the password to find Eliot. I don't know what's going on Nate but I-"

Another interruption and dismissal then Nate had hung up.

"Something's going on in L.A." He said to no one in particular. He wanted this date, but the team…

"So…" Parker said, drawing out the word. "There are tall buildings in L.A. and I know all the good ones. We can go there now and be there if Nate decides we should go steal something."

Hardison looked to Parker. "I could kiss you."

She gave what he was pretty sure was an attempt at a pout. "Why don't you? We had sex like four times last night."

He opened his mouth to respond but really? He just stood up and kissed her, briefly, before pulling away. "Let's pack and get to L.A.."

Parker nodded, resolutely. "We save Eliot and Sophie. Make sure Tara's okay. Then more kissing. And sex."

Hardison watched her all the way back to her room, a slight swish in her hips that would have made Sophie proud.

"That's my girl."

Yeah, they weren't even on a job and things were going south, but for some odd reason he couldn't stop grinning.


	7. World So Cold

__**Notes: **Title comes from the song World So Cold

* * *

><p><em><em>**Two Knights Closing  
><strong>_I don't believe men are born to be killers  
>I don't believe the world can't be saved<em>

* * *

><p><em><strong>One Year Earlier<strong>_

"Just go…"

Sophie knew the moment she heard the words, that the rules had changed to something she didn't understand.

She stumbled as she tried to catch her balance, high heels and mid-rescue adrenalin not helpful when your rescuer suddenly shoves you forward.

Despite her distraction something in the words still registered. The desperation maybe. Or the way they sounded like they'd been shoved up his throat, past a force trying to smother him, and out from behind clenched teeth.

She turned, though later she'd try to deny that her instinct had been to turn to help him. He'd leaned against a wall, clutching injuries, trembling, looking like he was about to shake to pieces, pain of unknown origin written across his face.

"You're hurt," Sophie said, trying to get Eliot to let her see the wound, to administer first aid or something, anything, to ease that fear that he was about to implode.

It would take longer than she liked to admit to forget the next moment, when hands so adapt at breaking bone and rending bodies but always so gentle with her found her shoulder and shoved her away, sending her sprawling to the ground, scraped skin and bumped limbs not hurting nearly as badly as that place on her shoulder where she could have sworn her skin was burning.

"Run," he stuttered out. There was fear in his voice now. She looked up and she realized it was fear for them. Sophie didn't know what was going on, but she knew in her bones if she stayed to find out her blood would be on Eliot's hands. "RUN."

Sophie scrambled to her feet and fled, not letting herself look back, not wanting to see the true violence in the eyes of the Black Knight chasing her away.

_**Unknown Location in L.A.  
>Present Day<strong>_

Later, if there would be a later, Sophie knows she is going to marvel at that moment, and this.

She had followed Eliot to L.A., to his old apartment, chasing a trail of seemingly false memories and cookie crumbs to a burned out youth center. She'd watched him walk about like he was in a trance, old memories chasing back into his mind and losing him in their return.

And then a man had come to the gate; older, tall, graying hair, flanked by goons. He'd spoken a single phrase.

"Echo, Check in."

Calling Eliot 'Echo', and Eliot had turned, his attention locking onto him.

The man had spoken one more phrase and Eliot had collapsed, unconscious.

Years ago, when they were working together, Sophie had found Tara drinking one night in January in their normal meeting location. Drinking hard enough that she was already tipsy. A hour later she'd been drunk enough to explain that it was the birthday of her "other brother in arms", a boy named Echo whose twenty-sixth birthday she and Charlie should have been celebrating.

Instead they were mourning the fifth anniversary of his death.

More than that though, Sophie never heard; but years later, she was in L.A. chasing the killer of a man named Charlie who both Tara and Eliot knew, and she was hearing someone call Eliot 'Echo'?

And now, seeing Eliot fall at just a word, the way she'd spent months convincing Tara Neuro-Lingusitic Programming *didn't* work…

Jigsaw puzzle pieces and bits were falling into place too fast for Sophie to comprehend the final picture.

She was stopped by the goons before she could reach Eliot. The guns pointed at her were held in steady hands and the expressions on the men carrying them were all business. The type of men Eliot took out because she couldn't con her way past.

Only Eliot was down and Sophie was beginning to understand what was going on.

The old man looked down at Eliot and then up at her and smiled. "Ah, yes," he said, simply. "You'll do nicely." Two goons appeared, half carrying, half dragging Eliot away. The two with guns on her patted her down, took away her cell phone, and hustled her toward a van and into the back with an unconscious Eliot.

She was allowed to sit with him at least, as they drove off towards wherever the hell was their destination and Sophie took advantage of her free hands, checking Eliot for injuries and then just holding him, silently praying that the others were looking for them, that Eliot would wake up and rescue them, that she'd get some kind of opening to turn this around.

The trip had been short to wherever they were going. The rear doors of the van were opened underground, Eliot was dragged out and she was nudged along at gunpoint. It looked like some kind of extensive underground basement facility, and the room they were eventually left in was some sort of large closet, emptied out and with a reinforced door and concrete walls.

They'd been left alone for a little while and as the first half hour passed, Eliot started to stir.

"That's it," Sophie muttered to him, trying to coax him back into the realm of the waking. Escaping captivity, at least this kind, was his forte. And she needed to know what they were dealing with. "Wake up."

The door opened, the old man entered with a small metal box and two more of his goons (different men than the ones before, and she'd seen another different one on the way in. There were at least seven of them, probably more, not good odds but not the worst either).

"Sorry for my rudeness earlier," the man stated, as if it were a regular Tuesday meeting arrangement for him to kidnap someone. "I am Dr. Samuel Kent." Another man (number eight) brought in a stool and closed the door behind them. Kent sat the metal box on top of the stool.

"Sophie," Sophie responded to the introduction. She had no time to pick out an alias and she had a feeling Eliot might not be in a state to pick up whatever alias she was using later. Better to give her name now. It would be easier to get a lie past Kent if he didn't catch her in one first.

Kent nodded approvingly. "Good good. I feel I should inform you, Sophie, that I am a teacher. The man you're holding is one of my former students." He opened the box and started to dig through it. "When I met him he was a street urchin, a couple weeks away from selling himself for something to eat, a couple months away from quieting the dreams with drugs. Maybe three years from ODing in some back alley, if somewhere along the way all that didn't break that stubbornness he thought was control and cause him to snap and shoot up some corner store first."

Any response Sophie could have come up with for that was silenced when Kent withdrew a syringe and small vial of clear liquid from the metal box.

"But I managed to catch him first. Like all my other students. He had the spark of promise if given direction and discipline. And I gave him both." A proud smile crossed Kent's lips as he drew some of the liquid into the syringe. "Taught them direction, focus, discipline. Made them into something that could benefit society. Right until…" He crossed to her and knelt next to her and Eliot. Sophie didn't want to let Kent do whatever he intended on doing but she couldn't move Eliot far on her own, even if there was anywhere to move to, and she could feel the goons' eyes on her. "He's about to have a seizure so please let him lie flat. Though if you'd be so kind as to protect his head your friend would likely appreciate it."

Dread.

Sophie slipped out from under Eliot but did her best to put herself between Kent and Eliot. She couldn't just…

"Now, now… that's not the way," Kent chided gently. "If you behave I'll let you stay with him, unbound, ungagged. You'll be able to comfort him, take care of him. You two are partners in my classroom, you two should look out for each other, and understand should I have to discipline one I will discipline both."

Sophie hated that every grifter instinct was screaming at her to obey his rules for now, get a read, build a rapport, this would be slow and delicate.

This was Eliot.

But she knew Kent meant everything he said and getting them both hurt for an exercise in futility was just idiotic.

She knelt next to Eliot's head, brushing a strand of hair out of his face, not looking at Kent as he knelt beside Eliot. She slipped off her jacket and put it under his head, knukles white where she gripped the edges to keep from lashing out when Kent pulled up Eliot's sleeve and injected him with god only knew what.

She fought the burning sensation in her eyes as she waited, moments ticking into minutes, Kent getting up and leaving, not looking away from Eliot.

He seized ten minutes after Kent left. His body jerking up, arms flailing, low grunts of pain escaping him. Seconds, a minute, less than two, but it felt like hours, passed and then he went still.

And she was left to wait for whatever came next.

Sophie let herself doze, knowing she needed to be rested if she was going to have her wits about her.

Sophie had no way of knowing how long she'd dosed before the nightmares started. Eliot tensed in her arms, shifting anxiously, eyes moving behind his eyelids as he muttered beneath his breath, broken bits of sentences she couldn't interpret.

Then, after what felt like a short eternity, he calmed and quieted. His hand gripped a handful of her shirt and he told her, or whoever he thought she was; "When I'm with you I'm not as tired."

Sophie didn't know who the words were meant for but in that moment she silently promised to get him back to whoever it was.

Just as soon as they got out of here.

Eliot settled after that, but he was sleeping lighter, stirring just a little bit whenever she moved or called his name but never waking.

His eyes opened for the briefest moment when the door opened, looking up at her hazily before closing again as she fought to help him sit up, her attention split between him and Kent coming in with another bloody metal box. Eliot made a sound and she looked down, relieved to see his eyes open. "That's it. Stay with me."

Kent was coming closer and she looked up, the iron tight control over her panic and fear at this unknown situation cracking just a little. "No. Leave him alone," she said in a voice she'd later tell herself shook with anger rather than fear.

Kent just tsked at her and nodded to the goons. She tried to fight them off, punching the way Eliot had taught her but with only one free arm and Eliot's weight she never stood a chance. The goons grabbed Eliot and pulled him away from her, upright, toward Kent, while another goon pulled her to her feet and back.

She stumbled but kept her eyes on Eliot. His eyes were open but he wasn't seeing anything, held up by the men supporting him. He wrenched forward, gagging but with nothing in his stomach to expel. Fear took over his face when one of the goons grabbed his arm and administered the drug.

The reaction was almost instantaneous this time, Eliot lashing and straining against the men holding him, shaking, trembling, a look Sophie recognized in his eyes.

She'd seen it on a job what felt like a lifetime ago. She could almost hear his words then echoing inside of her head.

_Just go. Run._

But she couldn't run. Instead, the men holding her pushed her forward so she stumbled to her knees in the space in front of Eliot like a sacrificial lamb.

"I never told you what I taught my students Sophie," Kent said, just a hint of a taunt in his voice as he touched Eliot's cheek. The Hitter flinched back like he'd been struck, his whole body rocking and quaking in response. "I taught my students to be soldiers. Perfect soldiers who obey commands without thought or hesitation. I've taken that violence Echo here has always has inside him and honed it to a perfect edge for efficiently killing. Taming the beast." Kent turned to her with a smile. "Would you like a demonstration?"

Sophie looked up at Eliot, slow dawning horror at what she was hearing, understanding what it meant.

A word from Kent and Eliot would kill her.

"Echo ch-"

The words were interrupted by a noise escaping Eliot. Somewhere between a roar and a scream, and something so far beyond either, ripped free from deep within the hitter.

Suddenly Eliot was moving, pulling free of the goons, lashing out. The guards were down before it even registered that he'd broken free and he was attacking Kent, knocking him back and down, a blow to his solar plexus making it impossible for Kent to finish the command.

Then Eliot was turning toward her and Sophie felt whatever she'd been preparing to say suddenly cut off as those two blue eyes turned on her, alight, on fire…

She was caught in the gaze of a cobra.

Later the uneven hitching of his breath would make her amend that to rattlesnake.  
>He hesitated for a moment. For only a moment.<p>

"Echo," she said, remembering the words spoken. "Check in." His attention shifted. Something in his eyes changed. She forced herself up to her knees and then her feet, holding out a hand. A soft litany of words she wouldn't remember later escaped her lips as she crossed the space between them.

_**New Sparks Youth Center  
>Eighteen Years Ago<strong>_

He remembers this. He's always remembered this.

Nightmares. Dreams. Flashbacks of sensory input he both could and couldn't place.

There's an apology in Charlie's eyes. They knew someone had to do this. That this was their best choice. Echo had volunteered. The conditioning had never taken as strongly in Charlie and Echo felt like it was their job to do this to protect the other students.

And at some point Echo had gone from one of the worst fighters to the best.

They had agreed upon this. Charlie had taken every step to make this different somehow.

But there was still an apology in his eyes when he spoke the words that reverberated through his mind. "Echo, check in."

The second phrase, the command phrase, didn't even register consciously. Echo felt it hit him like a wave and he surrendered to it as he'd been taught. Fighting conditioning was futile and agonizing.

A moment in the memory. Something. A hint. Gone too quickly.

He felt himself move, his mind was spinning with disjointed calculations and plans, dodging things he distantly knew were attacks, placing perfectly aimed movements of his arms and legs to take down the obstacles in his way. It was slow and sharp and fast and disconnected like pieces of a puzzle he couldn't put together.

He had single clues and hints but he couldn't hold onto enough to understand or comprehend what they actually meant as a whole.

He felt sick but knew in his bones he couldn't stop until all the obstacles were down.

Warmth splattered across his face. Blood. He registered that it was blood.

He felt something give way. His mind told him he'd snapped a bone.

Was the blood from the bone?

What bone? He was smelling urine mixed with blood now. Had one of the obstacles died? Had he managed to get a knife.

He had a knife in his hand. He could do more damage to the targets now.

His face was wet. He couldn't remember how that happened.

Nothing was moving anymore.

He touched a railing, blood on his hands. He remembered where he was now. He looked up from the body at his feet, slipping into unconsciousness, saw the corpses littering the yard of the youth center. Cops would be coming soon.

Where was he?

"Echo, Check in." A voice, and anchor, pulling him back, giving him direction. He turned. Seeing Charlie. He knew where he was.

He was home.

"Close your eyes," Charlie said. "Breathe. Give yourself a few moments. You're done." A hand in his hair and he knew he was done for now. He breathed, looking back down, the hand moved away.

Another breath. The world still felt far away but it was coming back. He could put pieces back together. He knew where he was. What he was doing.

He was waiting. For what he wasn't sure right then, but it would come back to him in a minute.

"Are you ready?"

He opened his eyes, ready to respond, to move forward, always ready when Charlie asked.

Bright pain touched the base of his neck, searing out in blinding white pain that sent him tumbling into oblivion.

_**Present**_

Sophie saw one of the goons move too late to stop him. She'd been trying to calm Eliot. Getting him back to himself might be their only chance to get out of here.

But the man moved, a taser touching the back of Eliot's neck and sending him crashing down to the floor.

Kent got unsteadily to his feet, dusting himself off, trying to regain the posture he normally kept. "It appears some lessons need to be retaught." Kent snapped his fingers and gestured toward Sophie.

Two goons grabbed her shoulders as she sought the right words for this. She could talk her way out of this. She just needed the right angle.

Maybe it was the forty eight hours or more since she'd gotten decent sleep, or her worry about Eliot, or the fact she'd been kidnapped by a sociopath who had managed to defy the fact she *knew* behavior conditioning and neural linguistic programing did not work like that and that she was discovering way more about Eliot than she probably wanted to know.

Or maybe it was the fact she was a good enough grifter, had spent enough time with Eliot, to know what was coming next.

But she couldn't figure out the right thing to say. All she could do was brace herself.

_She could have just run._

The thought played over and over and over in her head.

She'd gotten away clean. It was her mother who'd gotten caught. Her mother had gotten greedy and made a mistake and didn't listen when Eva told her they needed to go.

Her mother never listened to her. You didn't listened to what tools thought, she thought bitterly.

She was just her mother's tool. A prop. She had every reason to not go back for her mother.

Her mother wouldn't have gone back for her.

Eva pressed the bag of ice harder against her eye, not sure why except as some kind of distraction from the cracking of the world around her. The pain from the black eye, the broken finger, the cuts and bruises and tears.

She'd gone back for her mother and they'd…

She was fourteen.

It was her mother.

Unbidden memory drifted forward, the little boy she'd known for a few brief months, the one who'd called her Eva, who was why she held onto that name when her mother tried to deny her one…

"You're like Cinderella. Cindereva. I want to rescue you. Your Mama's not a good mama."

She'd gone back for an idea of a mother that didn't exist. The woman sleeping in the next room…

She'd taken a beating to protect that woman and an hour ago that woman had slapped her for being hysterical.

She should have just left her and run. Blood maybe, but they weren't real family.

A figure appeared at the doorway, blurry. A soft cloth pressed against the cut on her lip.  
>"Shouldn't of come with me."<p>

Sophie opened her eyes slowly, ghost of old pain mixing with the fresh hot fire that had taken up residence in her body.

But her eyes seemed to work okay. No damage there, though she'd blacked out which might explain why it took a moment for vision to focus.

Eliot looked down at her, she was laying on his knees, his back against the wall of their cell. He smiled a little when she managed to focus on him. "Welcome back," he said, worry and relief in his voice.

He touched a wet cloth to her face, she could feel his hand shaking and she half wondered if the wall was the only thing keeping him semi upright.

She tried to sit up but his hand settled on her shoulder. "You took a bad beating, rest." His expression tightened as he said it but his hand stayed gentle and though she could see hints of rage in his eyes he held it down.

For her sake.

"Good to see you lucid," she said, glad her voice wasn't hoarse. She hadn't cried or screamed or anything. As beatings went it was probably only a mild one but…

Something about her world view had become extremely warped in the past few years if a beating that made her black out registered only as "mild" to her now.

Eliot winced a little. "I'm not glad to be," he responded. "Only reason they let the drugs wear off was so I could really appreciate what they'd done to ya." He bit his lip, pulling back from that flash of rage. "Starting training again. 'Cept you're standing in for Charlie this time."

"Maybe it's the blows to the head but I'm not really following you," Sophie stated. "I still don't really know what's going on."

Eliot took a breath and leaned his head back, closing his eyes, struggling for a moment before he started to talk, to tell a story.

A story about a boy on the run, who met another boy who made him feel safe and a man who made him feel like he was worth something. About twists and betrayals and that man turning the boys who trusted him into lab rats and soldiers he drugged and pimped out as fighters. How that man used the love those boys had for each other as a teaching tool. A failure meant the other would be punished.

He told her about those two boys. Their desperation to save eachother. A woman who came to get revenge only to fight to stop the nightmare she'd been through herself. How together they'd taken back their lives and defeated the man who'd betrayed them and become the guardians of the other boys they'd saved.

He told her how the story ended. The boy called Echo getting caught, using a memory trick and his own unstable mind to protect the ones he cared about. How after days of torture and drugs and convincing himself the his story was the truth something inside him broke. The creature known as The Black Knight was released and when Eliot came back to himself it was the false story he remembered. Truth locked safely away from even him until he followed the clues he'd built into the false memories decades ago back to the youth center.

"And now he's got you. He doesn't know what you are to me but you care and I care and…" Eliot's voice trailed off. "I'm gonna get you through this Sophie," he promised. "I'll do whatever I have to to keep you safe. The others'll come for us. I just… have to keep you alive until then."

Slowly Sophie pushed herself upright, fighting through the pain that made her mind hazy and her stomach fight to rebel, leaning against the wall and catching her breath before speaking. "You went Black Knight earlier," she stated. "This is where it comes from isn't it? A ghost of the conditioning?"

Eliot didn't respond.

"Kent'll make you go back to that. He'll pull the Black Knight out if you let him." She turned, looking to Eliot, willing him to look up from the floor where his eyes had become fixed and look at her. "Don't let him," she insisted. "The others will come for us. Nate needs you to come home."

That made Eliot look at her. He opened her mouth and she shook her head, not letting him respond.

"No. Eliot. Don't start. Nate loves you. You love him. And I wish to God you two could just get over yourselves already and see that. In another story Nate might have loved me but… this isn't that story." She blinked her eyes clear, damn concussion blurring her vision and making her eyes water. "Damnit Eliot this is Nate's last chance. If you don't come home it's over. He's done. Me, Parker, Hardison… all of us together couldn't keep him from self destructing. We lose you, we lose him. We lose you both and the teams gone. Hardison'll disappear into cyberspace and maybe he'll try to reconnect to someone, some day, he's young, but maybe not. I don't even want to consider what it would do to Parker. I'd survive but…"

Silence. Just long moments of silence.

"You need to get home alive Eliot," she said, simply. "Your job is to protect our team, our family, but you act as if you dying to do that job is acceptable… if you die..." She shook her head. "Eliot. No matter what happens you need to stay alive."

She looked back at the other wall of their cell, worn out, hurting, praying he understood…

A calloused, shaking, hand found hers and held it gently. "I need to stay alive," Eliot's voice repeated back to her. "We both need to stay alive."

He repeated it like a mantra and fell silent.

Time passed, she leaned sideways, resting against his shoulder, the movement startling him out of his thoughts and he put an arm around her. "You know." He said after a moment. "I feel like we should be playing chess." It sounded like he was joking but she couldn't figure out what he found so amusing. "I wonder if we get room service here."

"You're a very strange man, Eliot," she quipped back at him softly.

He nodded his agreement.

More silence, time stretching on around them.

"Hey Soph. When Kent gets back… when he gets back he's probably going to ask me to do something. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna play his games. It'll keep both of us alive. And I'll fight like hell to come back to you… and go back with you."

Sophie worried at her lip. It wasn't a promise, and considering the circumstances it wasn't really reassuring as she'd like.

But...

The hand still holding hers was steadier now and there was determination in Eliot's voice all the same and maybe… maybe she'd finally managed to get something through to him.

She tightened her grip on his hand, trying to ground him and herself, trying to hold onto whatever they had left.

"Don't worry Sophie," he told her, squeezing her hand in return. "I'm not going anywhere."


	8. Going Through Hell

**Notes: **we're out of the character duo chapters and time will mostly return to a linear fashion now.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Eight: Going Through Hell<strong>

_When you're going through hell, keep on goin'  
>Don't slow down, if you're scared don't show it<br>You might get out before the devil even knows you're there_

* * *

><p>When they took down Blackpole, blew up their offices, left LA, and went their separate ways Nate had thought the team was done. No more cons. No more team. No more…<p>

But at least there would be no more L.A.

Except it wasn't the end of the team, and now they were back together, back in L.A., working *with* Sterling, getting revenge for Eliot and Tara this time around, rescuing Eliot and Sophie instead of Hardison and Parker…

"So that's the con," he told the assembled group of faces.

He hadn't intended to get Maggie involved in all this, but after finding out from Tara what was going on she had insisted on at least providing them with a home base and had taken responsibility for making sure Tara rested.

Tara was out cold when Nate got to Maggie's apartment but Maggie didn't have everything needed to keep her out for long.

Hardison had tried to be subtle when he called but Parker had been too impatient and told them they would come by to visit Maggie and help save Eliot and Sophie. By the time Hardison and Parker had called a little after noon to say they were about to board an airplane to come to L.A. Tara was awake enough to be insisting she was fine despite Maggie's pointed, not-at-all-impressed, remarks about how Tara couldn't even stand without support and she really should get back in bed before she fell and tore her stitches.

Nate had a moment where he wondered if Tara got that stubbornness from growing up around Eliot, or him from growing up around her, or if they had developed it independently and were drawn to that character trait in the other (she'd been twenty four, he reminded himself, already grown up). He wanted a drink, needed one; he'd been fighting the dread and panic and need to being doing *something* since he got word that Eliot was out of contact. He'd be fighting the shakes soon too. He didn't need to be fighting the fact that when Tara told him the details she'd been less than shy about the nature of the relationship between Eliot, Charlie, and herself, back in the day.

When Parker and Hardison arrived just before five Tara had worn herself out telling Nate how every plan he could come up with was a horrible idea and was taking a nap. Parker and Hardison's arrival woke her and it was only a matter of time before even Maggie was gently suggesting that working with Sterling was possibly a bad idea considering the feud between him and the hostages.

"We're down not one but two grifters," Nate had pointed out. "Three if you count the fact Eliot runs support for most our cons. We can't afford another Iceman fiasco and or someone being stabbed with a fork and-" He shook his head as Parker started to move to gesture. "We're conning our way into a hostile base with two members of our team hostage and no idea how many guys with guns standing against us. It's dangerous for us, Parker."

"You said it yourself," Tara put in, voice gentler than it had been most of the day. "Maggie's the most honest person you know. A con like this isn't the time to change that."

"I'm also standing right here," Maggie drawled. "Though I agree. It sounds like a white queen doesn't belong in this game." There was something distant in the hint of a grin that touched her lips before she recognized the others had stopped to stare at her. "What? I was married to Nate for fifteen years." She turned to go back to the kitchen.

"Anyway…" Nate didn't really know what to add after that.

The argument hadn't ended there but eventually they did all come to Nate's point. Their best chances were to bring Sterling in, hope he stuck to his word, and plan for the double cross.

They'd planned from there, Nate activating Eliot's tracker for just long enough for Hardison to get a read before disengaging it. The last thing they needed was for someone to figure out he had one and remove it.

The good news was Eliot was still in the city. They had his location.

The bad news was that by the time Nate was calling Sterling to tell them they were in, Parker was scouting the area and reported back the location looked like an abandoned factory of some sort, though she could tell it was designed to blend into the surroundings. She could see evidence that it had been retrofitted for increased stability and security. "And the windows are too dirty," she added. "Some should be, yeah, but they're all too dirty to see through and none of them are broken." Just by the tone Nate could tell she was wearing the face most people would make if a kid tried to blame the broken vase on a non-existent dog while holding a baseball bat.

Then the security had swept through and they'd known this was going to take some subtly. Some time.

"Or not," Tara objected when Sterling stated the days of additional prep, and the subtlety they'd need going in. The con was not entirely worked out yet, since Sterling was, as usual, throwing wrenches into the works. "We're conning our way in." Tara argued. "Con. Confidence. Sell him his dream."

The words were familiar. Back to that first job with her.

"And what is his dream?" Sterling asked, hint of a sneer in his voice.

Tara pushed herself to sit upright on the couch. "The project he keeps repeating is the one that got him kicked out of the military. Too much lost money and wasted resources and the fiasco at the end caused a scandal. He's been trying to get it right all this time, telling himself if he does they'll take him back."

"So we what? Show up as a couple of military scientists interested in his project and come to court him?" Sterling didn't bother hiding his skepticim.

And Nate saw it. So simple yet, oddly elegant. "Yes," he stated. "He's not just been involved with military science but intelligence gathering." He got up, going to the board they'd found and were using as a makeshift plans board. "Don't you see it?" Why hadn't he seen it before now? Eliot and Sophie's lives were on the line. He had to be sharp. "Kent… Kent wants to be brought back into the fold. It's not about money, it's about ego, proving they shouldn't have gotten rid of him. But more than that the more we know, the better we are, the more it means that we're there to court him." He turned back to the others, gesturing with more excitement than he'd felt all day. "We walk right up to the front door and sell him his dream."

They didn't all get it quite yet, but they would.

"Alright. Lets go steal the Department of Defense."

"Isn't that tr-" Parker started before making a face. "Have we stolen it before?"

"Department of Agriculture," Hardison answered. "Three months ago."

"Yeah," Parker said, a grin forming on her face. "With the weedwackers. That was fun."

Nate needed a drink for a lot of reasons.

But despite the reminder about the fiasco that was the Needle in a Pawnshop Job and Parker's continued insistence that they had already stolen the Department of Defense before they managed to get through the rest of the planning.

They wrapped up. Sterling headed back to meet with his team, Maggie got Tara back to bed and got blankets for everyone to camp out. Nate gave the order for everyone to get some sleep since Hardison had what prep they'd need already done and somehow…

Somehow it ended up just past midnight and Nate was in Maggie's kitchen staring down the bottle of wine that he'd found crammed into a back cupboard. White. Maggie hated white. Probably a gift. He could remember from their years living together that if Nate didn't drink the white wine someone gave them she'd dutifully hold onto it, shoved in the back of some cupboard, for three months. After that she'd take it into work and leave it there.

It had been two months since Christmas. The offending bottle was probably on it's way out soon but had escaped what he guessed was her attempts to clear the alcohol out of the apartment within the first twenty minutes of his arrival.

She'd known he was detoxing within a minute of seeing him.

Her perceptiveness was one of the reasons he'd married her.

And through all of that, every thought and more, he'd been there a while, he couldn't make himself look away.

"Nate," Maggie said from behind him. He turned, finally, only to have his eyes settle on the glass in her hand. A few inches of amber colored liquid in the bottom of it. "Nate," She repeated, a sort of apology in her voice as she pulled his attention to her face. "I…" She didn't seem to have anything to follow that, so she just handed him the glass.

For a brief moment their fingers met, memory, history, caring, and miles and miles of distance traversed in a moment but broken when she slipped her hand away.

"Tell Eliot…" She shook her head. "I'll tell him myself. When you bring him back."

Nate nodded, understanding, feeling the tight mass that had once been his insides twist a little bit more, the pressure on his lungs of panic and need and everything he couldn't afford to slow down and deal with right now because Eliot and Sophie might already be dead…

He took a drink, closing his eyes, imagining everything easing and loosening, his head clearing.

He needed his head clear for this.

Maggie left the bottle next to him and slipped out of the room.

**oOo**

The ironic thing was that everything went more or less according to plan. Parker should have remembered it was when things initially went according to plan that all hell inevitably broke lose.

Sterling met them in the morning, dressed for the con, a car waiting for them outside and his own forged credentials. Nate and Parker had gone with him, a second military scientist and their assistant, and they'd gone right out to Kent's hideout and knocked on the front door.

An exchange of not-entirely-pleasantries with the guards (what looked like mostly local muscle), searches for weapons or wires, and they were being hustled inside a warehouse.

A handful of boys, all of them not much older than eighteen, if that, lingered throughout the warehouse, sparring or sitting with each other and chatting. One was already running into the back office while a couple watched with cautious eyes.

A few minutes passed before the boy who'd gone into the office reappeared, stopping in front of them and standing to attention. "Mr. Kent sends his greetings. He is unable to come to see you personally but if you provide me with your credentials I can bring them to him and he'll determine if he can make time for you."

They handed over their IDs without raising a fuss; Nate and Sterling had started in on their good cop bad cop thing and Parker had tried to not look at the kids now staring at them.

Eliot once looked like that. She wanted to see what he'd looked like back then. But she didn't. This all made her stomach hurt and a part of her really wished she was back in New York with Hardison. But they needed her to rescue Eliot and Sophie and she wanted to rescue Eliot and Sophie, and the crying in her sad angry place at all she'd found out made her really want to hurt Kent.

The boy returned and led them into the office which, it turned out, had an elevator that took them into the basement. It would have been really cool if she'd been breaking in as a thief and not as a grifter in a really itchy uniform.

She hated pencil skirts and polyester just… egh.

She was fighting the urge to mess with her skirt when they stepped out of the elevator and down a narrow hall and into an office of sorts, and she was reminded that any job that started off the way it was supposed to was going to just go badly in the end.

Kent was sat behind a desk.

Behind and to his right stood Eliot.

He wasn't tied to anything. Wasn't bound. He was dressed in his own clothes and his hair was tied back and his arms folded behind his back at parade rest his face set to stare some place to the left of the door.

Like a statue. Maybe it was a lifelike Eliot Statue? Maybe Kent was obsessed?

But it was breathing and it slowly turned to look at them. Eyes looked between them slowly, assessing them, before landing on Parker for a moment longer than the other ones. Parker told herself Eliot was trying to mentally communicate with her, or was reacting to the fact she'd worn this get up. Something other than him acknowledging in this *state* that she was the biggest threat of the three of them.

It was all Parker could do, to not break character and react.

Kent had trained Eliot. Kent had Sophie hostage. He could be using her as leverage against Eliot to make him act like… like…

"Ah, Mr. Kent. Good to meet you," Sterling started, not even glancing toward Eliot. "At the agency we've been hearing about your project for some time. Now that our sources say you've had some successes I've been able to convince my superiors to allow an investigatory team to make contact."

They made nice before Kent inquired about Nate, who made some snippy comment about Kent's little operation and got into a snark match with Sterling and really Parker had to wonder if they'd ever done it because it would explain *so* much.

Sterling "convinced" Nate to at least get enough for a full report about whether Kent was worth pursuing before writing off the whole situation, mentioning the potential and blah, blah, whatever. Parker was waiting for her opening to sneak off and find Sophie.

If they could get Sophie out safely then Eliot would bust out of there faster than The Slash.

That wasn't it. The Flash. She was rappelling with Hardison. If she was going to try to make comic book references she should probably try to get them right.

"Proof?" Kent asked, change in his tone bringing Parker's attention back to the grift. "Well I suppose I could show you my students and facilities but I have some proof right here." He looked back to Eliot. "This is Echo. He was one of my students the last time I was in L.A.. Despite some misfortune and miscalculations with that project that led to him leaving my instruction I've managed to bring him back in with little urging. Despite nearly twenty years he's retained my teaching extraordinarily well."

"We don't need Jarheads, Mr. Kent," Nate put in. "We need someone who can do covert work, act without direct supervision if needed. Someone with a mind as agile and sharp as their bodies."

Samuel smiled. "Echo. I understand you've been doing some undercover work of late. Why not give a demonstration."

Eliot looked to Kent and nodded. "Yes sir. With pleasure."

He eased out of parade rest, his posture shifting as he did the thing he'd do when he played a role in a con, where his whole body seemed to become something not-Eliot in ways Parker was only just beginning to realize but still didn't understand.

"Well, Miss, see I grew up in Kentucky," His accent thickened from just the moment before, that smile that made her insides warm as he addressed her. "A short walk away from the Tam River, least until I ended up out west here. Did some fighting in my time, undercover work, good with just 'bout everything that shoots a round or holds and edge but a good Winchester is still my favorite. Did some work for security forces but… somehow found myself in fear for my life, far from home, law men after me, just another renegade." He shook his head a little, like he was clearing it, his posture shifting again as he turned to look to Nate, his accent changing, voice softening. Closer to that job with the MMA fighter. "But with some help… well I may figure out someway outta that life and back in school here. I always figured I was just born under a bad sign but maybe …" He shrugged, looking bashful. "Look at me, yammerin'. Guess I'm just excited about the idea of another graduation day. With a little help."

He looked back to Kent who nodded, pleased.

'_Tam River, Winchester…' _Hardison said over the comms, obviously having heard what Eliot said. He sounded confused for a minute. "_He couldn't… He's Eliot. He…"_

"_What is it?" _Tara half growled.

Another beat and Hardison was answering. _"Guys. I think Eliot was trying to pass us a message. River Tam is that character I kept saying he was like back after we found out about The Black Knight. Winchester is the last name of the main characters in Supernatural."_ In the background they could hear the sound of Hardison replaying Eliot's monologue. "_The bit about being a renegade? There's this scene in Supernatural set to the song Renegade and he was practically quoting it… and," _Hardison's voice reached a new pitch, _"Born Under and Bad Sign's an episode!"_

_"Okay so he's trying to pass you a message using geek references because you'd realize he was making them for a reason and Kent wouldn't." _Tara provided.

"I'm sorry. That's all nice and good Mr. Kent," Nate said, his pitch changing slightly to his intercom voice. "But you've shown us figures and timelines for your project... _what does it mean?"_

_"I have no idea," _Hardison replied. "_Five minutes ago I would have sworn he couldn't even remember River's first name."_

_"How about you figure it out then?" _Tara suggested.

_"Working on it," _Hardison responded before his voice quieted, obviously muttering to himself. _"Why don't I figure it out? Why don't _You _figure it out."_

"You're right," Kent said. "The statistics aren't convincing on their own. How about I give you a tour?" Kent stood, leading them out. Parker's hopes of slipping away died when Eliot closed rank behind them. She didn't want to get him in trouble.

_"Okay. River Tam was taken in by a special academy only was experimented on and turned into a spy, human weapon, and mind reading assassin who went insane. Kick ass fighter. Like Eliot. Also the hair. Off subject. In the episode the Renegade song was featured in there was a really paranoid man, bank robbery, and shifters. Really nasty guys who could make themselves look like people. Born Under a Bad Sign's an episode where Sam's acting crazy but turns out he's possessed by Meg, a daemon, trying to get revenge by making Dean kill..."_

Kent showed them down the hallway. Spaces for the boys to sleep. A medical station. He stopped a couple boys heading back up the hallway from the room at the end and introduced them as Sierra and Foxtrot before sending them on their way. "See when I take them in I give them new names. It gives them a sense of identity associated with what I do here. They're leaving behind lives filled with alcohol, homelessness, gangs, casual violence and drugs."

"_Okay. What do they have in common. Uh… bad things. Things going sideways. Not helpful um… I got it!" _Hardison paused, noise in the background changing. "_River, shifters, Sam. They all had good guys attacking their friends, being made to attack their friends. He's trying to tell us he's not gone darkside by choice."_

"Well we already knew that much," Nate said with disdain toward Kent but the obvious message loud and clear. "Shouldn't there be something in all this we don't know?"

_"I'm trying but there ain't exactly a decoder ring for this." _Hardison stated.

_"Kent's implanted Eliot with behavioural conditioning," _Tara said. "_Just like Charlie and the others. We didn't know if the conditioning would last the years but from what I saw with Bravo when he attacked me it still has some power." _Silence on the line. "_What if he's trying to warn us his conditioning is still active enough he might attack you if ordered?"_

More silence.

Parker listened to the sound of Eliot's footsteps behind her. They should sound different. He had a very distinctive walk. That's what Eliot would say. It should sound different because that was *Eliot's* distinctive walk. Not…

"_Damn… he really is River."_

Kent led them through the last door into… what looked kinda like an arena. The room was a little more than two stories tall, there was a raised walkway along the edges with a viewing platform just above where they entered. Guards and boys stood along the walkway (No guns. Parker had only seen two guns so far. Both on the guards from outside) while six tough and ruff looking men were tied up in the center.

"This is our main training area," Kent said leading them toward the stairs to the viewing box. "The men there were local thugs who got too nosy into my business. I was going to use them as training tools but they'll serve as your demonstration as to the other skills I can teach. Echo, untie them."

Eliot broke away from the group, starting to untie the men.

"Now, please," He gestured to the foldable chairs that had been placed in the box. "Take a seat and enjoy the sight." Nate and Sterling sat down; but Parker kept to her feet, to the edge. "Michel, Andrew," Kent called out, guards along the wall looking up from their posts along the walls. "Would you help Echo. It would be good to get this moving quicker."

The guards climbed down into the arena and started to help, sawing through the ties with a long knife each had pulled out of a concealed sheath. Out of the corner of her eye, Parker saw Kent smile.

Her stomach clenched.

As the last thug was freed Kent stood up and walked to the front of the platform. "Echo," he called. "Check in."

Eliot went still, and Parker saw a flash of recognition, of horror, cross his face before it blanked and he turned to look up at Kent.

Nate and Sterling stood, coming forward.

"Echo. Kentari. Macarbe. Lupin."

Eliot's head dropped forward. The guards who had gone down to help looked up at Kent in shock.

For a moment there was stunned silence.

Then Eliot moved.

Parker was used to fast. Was used to watching Eliot fight.

Distantly she'd always known Eliot was holding back.

He wasn't holding back now.

He reached the closest guard first, dodging and ducking and striking. He got the knife from the guard and put it to deadly use. Blood spattered with each strike of the knife, and she could hear the crunch of bones breaking as the first guard went down dead before he could scream.

Then the others were on Eliot, seeing group attack as the only way of surviving this. Of taking Eliot down.

Only it was too late. By then Eliot wasn't fighting. Parker had seen fights. She knew what Eliot fighting looked like.

Now Eliot was dancing. No emotion on his face as he ducked and spun and flowed around the other fighters, moving almost too quickly to follow. His limbs moving effortlessly and seemingly without reason only that a heartbeat later there'd be a fountain of blood or a scream of pain from his victims.

Another turn, another opponent fell backwards, screaming; clutching the bloody stump of a wrist while his hand tumbled across the floor on the other side leaving an abstract trail of gore on the concrete ground.

He'd made the mistake of grabbing at Eliot's hair.

It was just seconds before another opponent went down, clutching at a slit throat. A fourth died with the knife embedded in his heart, slowing Eliot for only a moment when the blade got stuck and he had to leave it embedded in the corpse.

Parker knew later this would… she didn't know. She'd never…

But right now she was entranced, fear and adrenalin and some mixture of fear _for _Eliot and…

She didn't know how this would…

The fifth went down with a crushed throat. The sixth a broken neck. The seventh a blow to the head that might have only knocked him out. Maybe.

Eliot took the last one crashing to the ground, fists pounding him until he stopped moving. He rolled off the body and grabbed the knife from the corpse he'd ended up next to, throwing it to silence the screams of his last living adversary.

That last act was what got Parker, what made her back away from the railing just a little. Sure, Eliot had taken the others out with overkill but… they'd been attacking him. Sort of.

The last had been out of the fight. Eliot never would…

Eliot never would. That was the Black Knight. It wasn't Eliot.

_"Someone please tell me what I think just happened didn't happen," _Hardison said over the comms in the dead silence that followed the screaming.

She couldn't really answer.

Eliot turned to face them without expression. Splattered with blood but unhurt. Not even scratched. He took a few steps forward to retrieve the thrown knife then started to walk, stalk, toward the stairs when Kent called out, "Echo, check in. Stand down."

Eliot gasped, pulling in air sharply, dropping the knife, metal hitting concrete echoing around the room, falling to his knees then leaning forward on his hands, body spasming like he'd been puking and there was nothing left in his stomach.

Kent turned to Nate and Sterling, both looked like they'd rather be ill than continue the con.

"Don't worry," Kent stated. "The safety's back on the gun now. He's no longer a threat." Kent turned to her. "Go on, if you'd be so kind young miss. Go to him. I promise he won't hurt you."

Parker hesitated, wondering if she should refuse. She'd just watched Eliot slaughter eight people. She was just an assistant and she was pretty sure Sophie would tell her to refuse.

But that hadn't been Eliot, and now it was Eliot and Eliot looked…

She nodded, keeping her eyes wide, hoping Kent would think she was in shock or something and this wasn't breaking character.

She climbed down the stairs, shying past the bodies in what was only kind-of-pretend horror, and reached Eliot. Back behind her and above she could hear Sterling and Nate trying to continue the con.

Eliot hadn't risen from his knees by the time she got to him. Cautious, and kind of afraid but not really, she closed the ground between them and set her hand on his shoulder.

He turned sharply to look at her and she tried to smile, the soft one. The kind she'd tried to give him in his room at his sister's house.

A look of confusion crossed his face as he slowly sat back and shook out his hair, what wasn't left tied back anyway. When he ran his hands through it, his fingers managed to reach the present she'd left for him attached to the collar of his shirt.

A paper clip.

She stood there, smiling for all she had, willing him to remember, to understand.

Forever ago she and Hardison had fled from his threats to kill them with a paperclip. She'd given him one to encourage him to kill the lady who mocked his hair.

Now she was giving him one to tell him…

To tell him this didn't change things. She still trusted him to protect her and the team and they'd get him back and everything would be okay.

Somehow.

She turned back and retreated to the viewing platform where Sterling and Nate were getting ready to get out of there and regroup. The beginnings of their farewells and arrangements for a second meeting and...

"Oh, one other detail," Kent said, right as they reached the bottom of the stairs. "I really must ask for your autograph Jim Sterling. I've never met a real life Sherlock Holmes before."

_"Did he just?"_

"They're gonna shoot us in the face," Parker said going very still.

"Not exactly what I had in mind," Kent responded. "Echo. Heel."

Eliot slowly got to his feet and stumbled toward them, the blood on his face smeared further than before from his attempts to wipe it off.

Parker wasn't good at expressions, but she could recognize pain. A lot of it.

"Samuel plea-" he started but Kent held up a hand silencing him.

He pulled Eliot forward, settling his hand on the back of his neck. "Echo. Tell me. Do you know these three?" Eliot closed his eyes, hands clenching into fists like he was fighting something. Pain crossed his face. Kent leaned in closer, whispering something in Eliot's ear.

"Y…Yes… I do."

Kent smiled thinly. "Tell me. Who, to you, is this Jim Sterling?"

"An enemy," Eliot answered without real hesitation.

"And the girl?"

Eliot looked up, at her, guilt on his face. "Te…team mate…" Another breath, out slow. Pain. "Sister."

Kent made a face like he was pondering the possible connection there before adding. "And our snide friend here?" He gestured to Nate.

Eliot let his head drop forward, breath coming in ragged pants for a long moment before half whispering. "Boss… he's… my boss." Kent's grip tightened. "He… He's Nathan Ford. The man I love."


	9. Anthem for the Underdog

**Notes: **I'm sorry to say this but this is the end of the line. The Last chapter of this damn epic (well, for awhile, I've got a couple odd stories to add in at various places and there'll likely be a few time stamps showing up eventually). I'd like to thank everyone who commented. It helped me get through the rough spots in this mess.

Thanks. Later.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Nine: Anthem for the Underdog<strong>

_And we're here now feeling  
>The beat of a thousand hearts<br>Coming back to life again  
>We can make it<em>

* * *

><p>This was a bad day.<p>

As days went, this was about as bad as Nate could think of one going.

_"Would someone tell me what's going on!" _Over the comms Hardison was starting to freak out, hysteria in his voice as he babbled for someone to tell him that he hadn't just heard Eliot blow their aliases.

Nate really, really wished he could tell Hardison just that.

A part of him wanted to get stuck on _how_ Eliot had blown his alias. About the words Eliot had used. About how rarely those very words passed between them and how unbelievably important that made it, every time they were actually said.

But he put all that on the back burner. He couldn't be the man Eliot loved right now. He had to be The Black King.

Had to get them out of this alive.

"Well. This A Bad Day," Hhe muttered, ostensibly to Sterling, though the words were directed at Hardison; hoping he'd remember the code phrase they'd established all those years ago.

"_No kidding it's a bad day," _Hardison responded, either not getting the message or hung up on the phrasing.

"Do you have a plan for this?" Parker asked, either wanting to know for sure or trying to give him a cue.

Nate shook his head; watching Kent watch them, clearly amused. "No. I think we've gone past plan Z at this point."

_"Plan Z… OH!" _And Hardison got with the program. "_Contacting Interpol now. Giving them your location. They'll be on their way in less than five minutes. If they were dumb enough to use sirens you'd be hearing them in twenty."_

A Bad Day. Past Plan Z.

Simply speaking it meant call the authorities. Incarceration was a bitch but it was easier to fix than death.

_"Just stay alive for twenty minutes," _Tara said. _"And be careful. When they get there Kent will start pulling triggers. Hopefully the confus-"_

Kent started talking and Nate had to change focus. "Well. This is an interesting predicament. I can't let you all go but…" He looked to Eliot. "…even with his training and a lovely woman in my cells waiting for him to come back home, he lied to me. I always liked your spunk, Echo, but you cost me my last academy. It's time you learned to behave. Echo, stay."

Guards from around the room had been closing in. Nate could tell they were afraid; afraid of Eliot, but more afraid of Kent. He'd set Eliot on two of his own men; probably two trouble makers, but the others had to be wondering if they were next.

Kent made a shooing motion to the guards, who nudged Nate, Sterling, and Parker toward the center of the arena, before looking up to the boys still standing to attention. "Tango, get the others. Now. Yankie, get my kit for me. November, Sierra, get our guest."

The boys ran to do as told, Yankie running up to the observation platform and returning with a small metal box that he held for Kent while the older man picked through its contents.

And all the while Eliot just stood there; his eyes on the floor, body tense but face unreadable.

Within a minute, Kent pulled a syringe and vial of liquid from the box, carefully filling it and moving to stand beside Eliot. "Now I know you've been out of the program for awhile so I understand your need for a few reinforcements. You've been getting a little lead back. This should take care of that." Kent turned back to the others, holding up the syringe. "This is hydroxylamine-synaminsorbate. It's a neuro-chemical with some very interesting effects. It increases the subject's susceptibility to suggestion, suppresses aggressor instincts, and a number of other wonderful side effects that help lay the foundation for programming and conditioning, as well as take the fight out of those who resist."

With a showman's flare, Kent injected the needle and depressed the plunger.

Three minutes, Nate registered distantly. Only three minutes gone.

Kent removed the needle and patted Eliot's arm. "There now, you'll start to feel better soon. Well... no. I gave you the more potent training dose so you'll start to seize in about thirty seconds but it'll be over in a few minutes. Then you'll feel better."

"El-" Nate started but forced his mouth shut before the rest of the name came out and caught Parker's arm before she did something that would get her shot. He had to be… him. Eliot needed him to not get emotional right now.

Eliot needed his head in the game. Despite the constant chaos in their world Eliot needing him had always made it that much easier to put everything else aside.

"No Parker," he subvocalized, trusting the comms to take the words to her. "We wait for the right moment."

Eliot's eyes shot wide open and he crashed to his knees.

Heels. Nate could hear heels on the hard floor. A second later Sophie's voice cried out. "Eliot!" Nate looked to where Sophie was being escorted in. The boys let her break ahead and run to Eliot, catching him before he fell backward.

She wasn't bruised that Nate could see but he didn't miss the wince of pain or the clumsiness in her movements.

He logged that all away. He couldn't. Not now.

Boys started to stream in around them, heading up to the platform, expressions carefully blank but hints of fear in their eyes. Their glances lingered on Eliot.

There were eighteen boys in the room by the time they settled and Eliot went still in Sophie's hold, chest heaving to try to catch his breath but seemingly starting to recover.

Kent cleared his throat. Nate looked over, seeing Kent looking up to address his students.

"I understand that before he was terminated Bravo One told you stories. Stories about Charlie One and Echo One here. About how they broke the chain of command, burnt down the academy, and "freed" the students. I think it should be made very clear to you all that they did this through trickery, by allying themselves with an outsider, and by making such absurdly stupid choices that I was frankly taken off guard. They did not do it by breaking their conditioning. I will not be taken off-guard again."

Out of the corner of his eye Nate saw Eliot ease away from Sophie, kneeling, still breathing heavy but apparently getting his strength back.

"I took Echo back. And I've renewed his training. As many of you know, Echo was one of my very best students. However, he has always been a bit of a rebel. It's time he learned, as you all will learn, fighting the conditioning is pointless. Is impossible."

Kent pointed toward them, locking eyes with Nate for a moment before turning back to Eliot. "I will give you a choice. I will spare one of them to act as…motivation. The others will die by your hand. Who will you save? Sister? Lover? Or your friend here?"

Sterling gave a sigh that was possibly cover for muttering about theatrics.

Nate always thought Sterling would go to his grave sarcastic.

"_Dude, stall," _Hardison hissed in his ear_. "Get him to stall. We still need ten minutes people."_

Eliot looked toward Nate, holding his attention, something in that… An apology maybe. "My sister."

Eliot had a plan. He must have some kind of plan. Nate had to believe that.

It still hurt.

The guards pushed Parker toward the viewing platform while Sophie's escorts herded her to where Sterling and Nate were standing before quickly following the guards onto the platform.

"_Guys stall,"_ Hardison said again. _"Damnit. STALL!"_

Nate kept his eyes on Eliot, who kept staring back. Eliot had a plan. He just… He had to.

Nate's mind was spinning but he didn't…

"Echo," Kent said, taking a few steps toward the platform and looking back. "Kentari. Macarbe. Lupin."

Eliot's head dropped forward, his shoulders shook.

Then he looked up, met Nate's eyes, and gave a wolf-like smile.

"Sorry. Don't feel like dancin'," he said, before turning toward Kent. Eliot absently cracked his knuckles. "I have it on good authority Neurolinguistics don't work that way." Eliot stalked closer to Kent who seemed too shocked to react.

His expression was something like a snake charmer, suddenly finding himself caught in the glare of a cobra.

"The Hydro-nightmare shit is no more than a truth serum mixed with a neuro-toxin and a snake-venom kicker. Your programming's just hypnosis, classical conditioning, and convincing us that we couldn't fight back. Well the shows over, Samuel. You can't control me anymore." He looked up to the gallery. "He could never really control us."

"Ho…How…" Kent asked, eyes wide with horror.

"Thank a Russian crime lord called Nishka," Eliot stated, no mirth behind the grim, deadly grin on his face. "He used the snake venom kicker at that concentration. Didn't make the connection until you gave it to me just then but it got me picking it apart." He stalked closer to Samuel, mere inches between them, his voice the deadly calm that came before Eliot's worst fights. "They're all very distinctive poisons after all."

There was noise and chaos from the boys in the gallery. It wasn't like they were waking up from a dream but the control Kent once had on them, and now it seemed so clear to Nate, had depended on them believing entirely in it's control. Fighting the "conditioning" was impossible and submitting was painless so they had followed it. Add in drugs and unstable, impressionable boys and they'd been Kent's puppets.

Eliot had just shown them they could cut their own strings.

"G…Grab the girl!" Kent shouted, backing another step away from Eliot, starting to recover.

Nate turned, hearing the giggle (and only Parker would *giggle*) before he saw Parker vault over the railing of the platform and take the fall with more ease than most people fell out of bed.

There had been a reason Eliot had chosen her.

The guards went to pursue, only to find themselves outnumbered by eighteen very angry teenage boys.

"Echo. Stand down!" Kent said loudly, pulling Nate's focus back to Eliot. He watch Eliot punch Kent in the solar plexus, another blow landing across his face, faster. He had a grip on Kent's shirt. From this angle Nate couldn't see his face but he recognized Eliot's posture…

Someone, Sterling, caught his shoulder. He hadn't even realized he'd started to move. "Let this play out," Sterling stated. "It's time for Spencer to decide what he is."

Black Knight or White.

Monster or man.

**oOo**

It was just…

Everything, his whole life; Joey, Lawrence, Valentines Day, L.A., Charlie, Tara, Liars Houses, Nishka, Amie, Cairo, Cell Number Eight, Nate, Croatia, El, Marie, Retrievals, Chicago, Leverage, L.A., Two Davids, Boston, Kentucky. Chess. Black King. White Knight. White King. Black Knight.

His head was exploding. Too much.

His fist met flesh. Fourth time, his mind told him. Stomach. Soft tissue. Hurt like hell but it wasn't a knock-out blow.

He could hear the students, the team, could practically hear the comm not actually in his ear.

He felt like screaming. The whole world was pressing in around him. Everything was tearing him apart. The conditioning was fake but the drugs were real, that violence inside of him was real, the things he'd done were real.

The silence it gave him in a fight was still there, what he needed to stay sane when his mind was ripping to pieces…

He wouldn't though. He couldn't. The others were there. He needed to take out Kent and still be him.

Even in that moment, with the world pressing in on him and years, decades, a lifetime of life pushing and kicking and taking, rage built with never the ability to be released onto it's source…

And maybe because of it.

He knew if he did this, let it out, let that monster Samuel molded, created, made him into out, then he'd…

No.

It wasn't Samuel.

Samuel always told them he made them what they were. He gave them names. He twisted and molded and broke but… they let him because it was easier than to fight. Because they didn't think they could fight.

Samuel didn't create the Black Knight. Echo had. Eliot had. A break with reality. A broken teen not able to deal with the hell he'd stumbled into.

He'd created The Black Knight. He'd given to his own violence to try to impress Samuel and make himself a life. After the project he'd _chosen_ to stay a fighter. Even in his liars house he'd _chosen_ to fight and he'd never tried to walk away from that life.

He'd chosen the path that led him here. He'd created The Black Knight with every step he took.

The seventh punch landed on Samuel's chin. He knew a few more like that and Samuel would be dead.

He'd still win though and even… things wouldn't…

He had to get back to the team. Sophie's voice ringing in his ear.

He had to survive.

Samuel was struggling, instinct driving the next blow. The fear on Samuel's face. The knowledge of all the times this fucking scrap of life had left him crawling like a dog, had hurt Sophie, had killed his classmates, had killed Charlie.

Killed Charlie…

Would have had made him kill Nate and Parker and Sophie…

Something scraped against the skin of his collar, metal, a paperclip.

His arm stopped. Breathing choppy as he just stared at Samuel.

They were still alive. Nate and Parker and Sophie and Hardison and Tara were still alive.

And they needed him to come home alive.

They needed him to come home.

He let go of Samuel's collar, his arms dropping. "I'm not your monster Samuel," he said, stepping back. "I'm going home."

He looked up; above him the students had backed the guards into a huddle and were watching him.

They looked to him. Bravo had told them stories about him and Charlie.

But he wasn't Echo anymore and right at that moment he was too tired to lead another class out of hell.

He turned his eyes to Nate who just smiled, like he understood everything said in that look. And then Nate had turned to Sterling and Sophie and Parker were coming over to him and…

He ran a hand down his face, trying to clear his head; the drugs still in his system combined with the past seventy two hours made it nearly impossible. He felt dried blood rub off his skin at the action and he just...

He was done. He was just…

"Nate says he'll work with Sterling to do clean up. Make sure these boys get taken care of," Sophie said, appearing at his side, taking one of his elbows and starting to walk.

"Hardison's in the van. He's coming. If we go now we can get clear before Interpol." Parker added, taking his other side.

If pressed he would later be able to repeat how they got from there back to Maggie's place, the aftermath and all that followed.

But it all still felt out of focus and surreal, the adrenaline crash and the drugs and the physical abuse he'd taken and just… everything.

A shower. A change of clothes. He meant to wait for word from Nate. Knew he'd have to debrief with the crew. They'd have to come out with the whole fucking story and compare notes and there'd be so much cleanup, but he actually hoped Hardison bitched about it because that would be normal.

And somehow he ended up laying in Maggie's bed, Tara on the other side, and he couldn't help but remember how, a lifetime ago…

_Echo still smelled like blood, they all smelled like smoke, and they probably stank of other things. They were in a burned out warehouse they'd stumbled into after the students had gathered one last time, made arrangements for drop locations in a month where they'd let Charlie, Echo, and Tara know where they'd ended up, and scattered._

_They'd found a moldy, battered old mattress in the corner of the back office that didn't smell too much like piss and collapsed onto it in a jumble. They'd been awake for nearly seventy-two hours. They'd burned down their old life and the world of possibilities was stretching out in front of them and they were too tired to care about where they were or what they were sleeping on._

_They were alive and together and free and nothing else mattered._

"It's been a long road to get here," Tara muttered to the dark, hours or maybe just minutes later. "Never thought it'd be you next to me after Samuel finally went down."

"I remember now," Eliot said. "Everything. Didn't before. Blocked out. Had to. Else this story woulda had a different ending."

There was silence, sort of, broken only by muffled noises from elsewhere in the apartment.

"Charlie should be here," Eliot said. "Wish he was. Wish he'd…"

"He was happy," Tara said. "Happy you were still alive and had found a family. You made a life for yourself, so did he. This story could have had a different ending, but the one it has is pretty good."

Eliot closed his eyes. He could settle for that.

**oOo**

February eighteenth. A small, somber gathering walked down a disused trail in the Spark's Landing. It was a small campgrounds of sorts in California, and home base of A Safe Place to Land, a program once run by a man named Charlie India that provided shelter and counseling to children and teenagers who'd been victims of violent crimes.

Three men and one woman bore a simple casket, in it their fallen classmate and brother. A second casket followed behind, empty; the corpse never found, but the man still remembered.

Behind the caskets trailed a mastermind, an honest woman, a grifter, a hacker, a thief.

Charlie India and Bravo Foxtrot were buried next to the graves of the five members of their class who had died over the years since their liberation. Though not all the graves had bodies, they were careful to lay Charlie to rest beside the grave of Echo.

It was an odd gathering. Seven men hardened by life's battles who shared a common hell reunited to mourn those who'd fallen, the two surviving members of a trio, and a group of lone wolves, runaways and black chess pieces who'd become a family.

"I always thought I'd die alone," Parker muttered to Hardison, though not so softly the others couldn't hear her. "Not that I thought about it a lot but… I just figured I'd fall some day and die and no one would know who I was and…" She shrugged. "But now…" She made a face, shifting uncomfortably, probably not really liking the whole topic. "Eliot belongs here," she said finally. "Like two hundred years from now but… someday he should be here. And Tara. So... I want to be here to."

No one responded right away, the idea of death inevitable but…

"Yes," Sophie said after a time. "Here. Not some stranger's grave without even a real name."

Hardison just nodded, whatever he muttered lost into the air between him and the patch of grass on the far side of the clearing where his mind's eye was placing a series of small gray headstones with names and dates and deeds etched into them. A secret thief burial ground.

He could see others here to. They were a family. Some day they'd be ready for the next generation. The world would always need a little Leverage.

One by one the former students turned to leave, hands gripping Eliot's shoulder to welcome him back and thank him before slipping away and back to their lives. Parker and Hardison left as well, chased away by ghosts past and future and enticed to walk the camp's grounds.

There was some question about who'd run the camp and where funding would come from but those questions would be answered very soon.

Maggie stayed quiet, stayed back. She'd see this through to the end and bear witness even though she'd never known either man. She'd lived through their legacies.

Now she stood at the edge of the clearing, watching Eliot, watching Nate, watching sun filter through trees and listening to just the faintest sound of laughter.

She thought of a little urn in a quiet, cold mausoleum and a father, husband, lover watching Eliot standing at his own grave.

And of four days ago, after the team had left her place, when she'd called Nate only to be told he couldn't talk. He was with Eliot. He'd explain later.

She walked over to Nate and said softly; "Listen." The wind blew. Far off there was the sound of a camp song dissolving into laughter. She looked back around the clearing up toward the blue skies above. "He liked the sun. He liked camp. He'd have liked it here."

She didn't know how the story would end, but that sense of fear, of knowing it would end badly, eased a little at the hint of understanding.

Life went on, wounds healed, and they'd all end up here some day, but it wasn't today, and whenever it did come they'd end up here together.

Sophie watched Maggie leave, watched Tara turn to go. Tara had been here before. Had buried brothers here before.

She watched Nate watch Eliot before letting out a sigh.

This was their story, and if they needed one last kick in the ass then she could be the one to give it and they could consider it her blessing.

"You know he still thinks you'll leave him for me," she said, not bothering with her normal flair, when she stood next to Nate. "Now do something with that lump in your pocket or I'll start to think you're actually happy to be here." He blinked at her and she shook her head. "You're both very strange men." She let out a sigh and turned to leave.

Nate turned, watching her walk out of the clearing before walking over to stand next to Eliot. The sun was starting to set and they should be heading back soon. Boston was waiting for them and there were still people who needed to be helped and they all wanted to get back into the game, back to normal life.

But…

"This isn't really the time or place for this," Nate started, nervous, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "But… well. It's been two, or... well, ten years really, and all this just… I don't want us to end up like… what I mean is…"

"Marry me."

Huh?

Eliot smiled at him. "Don't have a ring or anythin' for ya but… will you marry me?"

_Well._

"I was about to ask you the same thing."

Eliot's smile became a grin, an old shadow that had darkened his eyes as long as Nate had known him, finally gone. "Well, dontcha know? White moves first."


End file.
